Voices of Armistice Day

“I opened the window and it really did seem, just in those first few moments, that a wonderful change happened. Not in human creatures’ hearts, no, but in the air; there seemed, just for a breath of time, a silence, like a silence that comes after the last drop of rain has fallen – you know?” Katherine Mansfield, whose brother Leslie Beauchamp was killed in the war, in London “Peace blessed peace … the whole thing seems too big to realise and too sad to understand.” Fanny Speedy, NZ army nurse in England “The world fit for heroes was ushered in on a wave of sluttishness, of burning, of snarling, of hating, of great rejoicing. The soldier’s job was done, the civilian mob was ready to dictate the peace, a mob infected by slogans.” John A Lee, wounded and recovering in London “A most respectable-looking citizen came out of a hotel, threw his arms around me and nearly whirled me off my feet … a group of young sailors swept gaily along kissing any girl who looked willing.” Ellen Roberts, wife of a country doctor visiting Wellington “This information was received very quietly by the troops who appeared to take it as a matter of course and did not exhibit any signs of rejoicing beyond firing a number of enemy flares in the evening.” Major General Sir Andrew Hamilton Russell