EUROPE SINCE 1918 CHAPTER I THE ARMISTICE OF NOVEMBER 11, 1918 October, 1918, brought a sweeping and unexpected change in the fortunes of Germany. In London and Paris it was not believed that the crash would come so soon. British and French political and journalistic circles were discussing the all-absorbing subject of Foch’s forward movement on the western front. During the war, already lasting over four years, there had been so little of military victories to record and comment upon that none seemed to be thinking of the inevitable day of Germany’s collapse. The armistices with Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary were regarded as military agreements, and the newspapers were silent about post-armistice events in southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Public opinion, therefore, was unprepared for Germany’s direct and definite demand for an armistice based upon the acceptance by all belligerents of President Wilson’s peace program. The speech of President Wilson at the opening of the Fourth Liberty Loan Campaign on September 27 was made the day after the collapse of Bulgaria. The superiority of numbers had already begun to tell against Germany on the western front. The President of the United States weighed fully every word uttered on that occasion. It was clear that the enemies of Germany had reached no understanding as to their attitude in case Germany should express the willingness to lay down her arms and confess that she was beaten. When, two days later, Bulgaria signed an armistice, and the Germans knew they could no longer hope for a drawn battle, it was excellent strategy to make the request for peace in the form of a direct appeal to President Wilson in which the Imperial German Government expressed its willingness to make peace “on the basis of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points and subsequent discourses, _notably that of September 27_.”