The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)

Peace was on the cards in wartime postal packages

- By Norman Watson

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 awakens special emotions. Even a century on, the day the guns fell silent on the Western Front is marked in ever-greater solemnity with red poppies and silent remembranc­e. No other day in the year is like it.

The Armistice Day peace which brought the Great War to an end was not unexpected, however.

Large crowds waited outside The Courier office in Albert Square for the latest news from negotiatio­ns at Compiègne. But, curiously, another Dundee publisher jumped the gun entirely.

Illustrate­d is an envelope sent by the local company James Valentine & Co to Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on November 9 1918 – two days before peace was declared.

The advertisin­g lettershee­t it contains offers six different Valentine “peace” postcards, “ready for immediate delivery” – suggesting the giant

thecourier­magazine Dundee publishing company was eager to capitalise on chances for sales from the anticipate­d Armistice.

Mono cards were priced at 4/- per dozen packets, with coloured cards at 5/6d per dozen.

Each packet had six assorted peace designs accompanie­d by the prescient pitch: “Victory! Peace!! May be here at any moment.”

The cards nowadays are rare and collectabl­e.

Come November 11, Dundee was ahead of many places in learning that the Armistice had been signed at five o’clock that Monday morning, allowing the authoritie­s six hours to enact the truce.

Before 40,000 earlyrisin­g workers had left the city’s mill and factory workplaces for their 8am breakfast break, the joyful tidings had been revealed by naval personnel in the estuary and had started to spread through the streets like the town’s famous marmalade!

Picture: Valentine’s peace postcards from 1918 (private collection).

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