When peace broke out after World War I, America rejoiced. Maryland was no exception.
The armistice declared Nov. 11, 1918, triggered jubilation throughout the state, the likes of which no one had ever seen. People tooted horns, rang cowbells and danced on dirt roads and cobbled streets. They sang hymns and war songs, embracing hugs with friends and strangers. They paraded down main streets in Baltimore, Annapolis, Westminster and Hagerstown, from dawn til late at night, to the music of marching bands that appeared, it seemed, from nowhere in a festive frenzy to celebrate the end of The Great War.
In Annapolis, one parade was led by the Naval Academy band, The Baltimore Sun reported, “a large number of the members of which are Italian and who were wild with joy at the termination of the war.”
The parade passed, circled back and kept marching for hours after dark, “turning into a torchlight procession — brooms, despite the high price, being the torches.”
In Hagerstown, factory and train whistles began blaring at 3 a.m., joined at dawn by tin cans and bells being dragged through the streets of town. At mid-morning, townsfolk joined a cavalcade of motor- and horse-drawn vehicles touting American flags and placards making “uncomplimentary insinuations about the [German] ex-Kaiser.”
The town of Westminster staged a parade of 300 cars, led by a truck displaying a captured German artillery gun. Then, citizens gathered in the town armory and sang the hymn, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”
Baltimore itself declared a municipal holiday as tens of thousands of people poured onto city streets, joining impromptu parades and clogging traffic. Courts and schools closed; department stores and munitions factories shut down.
“Nobody was in a humor for working,” The Sun reported. “Everyone realized that it would be almost a sacrilege to labor.”
American flags flew like confetti, amid home-scrawled placards that read, “To Hell with the Kaiser” and “We got Kaiser Bill’s goat.”
“The city celebrated, not in a spirit of vengeance, but in a spirit that proclaimed that justice and righteousness had triumphed,” The Sun opined. “And everyone joined in the joy of the day, even those who have left sons and brothers and husbands on the battlefields. Their joy was that their dear ones had not died in vain, and that their blood had helped buy the liberties of the world, now made secure.”
When one band began playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” the horde stopped its revelry and sang in heartfelt unison. When the music turned to “Over There,” a group of girls scrambled atop the portico of The Savings Bank of Baltimore building, on Baltimore Street, and danced to the tunes of the popular war songs.
In the end, The Sun reported, “Every device that could be employed to make a noise, every method that could be used to express deep feeling and unbounded joy, every meaning that could be put into a smile on a human face was used and shown in Baltimore on the greatest day that the world has ever known.”
Have a news tip? Contact Mike Klingaman at jklingaman@baltsun.com and 410-332-6456.
