Evening Standard comment: A century on, we give thanks and remember

If you were reading the Evening Standard on your journey home 100 years ago today, you would have been gripped by news that the worst conflict the world had ever seen was, at last, almost over.

After more than four years, a million deaths among those who served what was then the British Empire, and millions more elsewhere, the fighting was about to stop.

Our headline on November 9, 1918 — on a front page we reproduce here — confirmed the impending German defeat.

“Kaiser and Crown Prince Abdicate”, it read.

Evening Standard, November 9, 1918

Two days later, on another front page in a Late Night Special we reproduce below, the longed-for news finally came: “End Of The War”.

Germany had signed the armistice and the guns had fallen silent.

The last British soldier to die, George Ellison, was killed on patrol after the peace had been agreed but an hour and a half before it came into effect, at 11am.

This Sunday, at the same time on the same day of the same month of the same year in a different century, we will remember him, and all those who served and died in this war and others.

The moment will link us to a past which in some ways seems very distant. No one who fought in the war is still alive. Many of the kingdoms, empires and countries which fought it have vanished from the map. Our society has changed immensely, and for the better: it is more diverse, more tolerant and more prosperous.

We can hope never to see such a world war ever again.

Living history

But the act of remembrance this weekend will also be a chance to think about the things which link us to the London of 1918, and the war which was, finally, at an end. Some of those links are personal.

Relatives of some of those who served will join the march on Sunday past the Cenotaph. Many will remember the stories their grandparents and great-grandparents told of the Great War, a conflict that for them was not a piece of history fought by unknown warriors but a transforming part of their young lives.

Some will have talked, too, of the other horror of 1918, the influenza epidemic which may have killed more people around the world than both the world wars of the 20th century.

Evening Standard, November 11, 1918

The advertisement on the top of our front page on November 11th, 1918, is a sign: “Fight Influenza with Brand’s Essence of Beef”, it says.

Medicine is another of the things which has seen huge progress since 1918 (while Brand’s, it turns out, still thrives, now based in Asia). The epidemic is a reminder that, as Professor Hew Strachan writes on this page today, the end of the war was also the start of a struggle to win the peace.

Such stories are one way in which the awful reality of the First World War can be made clear today.

They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s painstaking work to change silent, black-and-white footage of the war into colour film with the voices of some of those who fought, shows this powerfully. It makes the suffering more comprehensible, although certainly not comfortable: made by the Imperial War Museum and the BBC (and shown on BBC Two at 9.30pm this coming Sunday) it is an astonishing tribute.

Another form of drama, War Horse, is returning to the National Theatre this month after playing in 11 countries to more than seven million people.

It, too, is a reminder that although the numbers involved in the conflict were vast, they involved millions of individuals, each with their own hopes and fears.

There are other, less personal, links between the London of 1918 and our city of today, too.

The population now is much the same as it was then, a little over eight million; but there was even less space.

Poor housing, high bills and the pressure of growth are not new worries for Londoners.

Reading your Evening Standard in November 1918, you might well have been travelling on the electric District line, or a Number 19 double decker bus on much the same route as you can today.

Arsenal FC played Millwall that afternoon, drawing 3-3.

We still live in a city that those who celebrated the end of the war in 1918 would recognise.

Those Londoners helped make the London we live in now.

We are linked by a war which cost many lives and changed many others: and which will be marked by the Armistice ceremony and act of remembrance this Sunday.

World War One - In 100 pictures

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