Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 03 September 1921
The Terminus.
We have arrived at the official and legal terminus of the Great War and are at liberty to get off and search out the pleasant paths of peace which must lie somewhere in the calm and sylvan territory beyond.
The hail of shot and shell slackened almost to cessation on November 11, 1918, and we have had very little of that since.
September 1921, sets up another landmark in our progress through these unquiet times. We are now deemed to be rid of a large part of arm’s aftermath. But what optimist will forecast, and what Order in Council will define, the blessed date when we shall have completely recovered from the wounds and evils of the war, and shall be at full and quiet liberty to profit by its lessons and benefits?
There is an air of unreality in an official declaration which ends a war practically ended over three years ago, so long ago that sadly too many of us have forgotten it.
The chief significance of yesterday’s formal declaration to be that it authorises a certain relaxation of licensing restrictions, and guillotines a large part of the war wages and war bonuses that have been paid under stress of the war and its economic consequences, in many industries and in the Civil Service. Both the nightmare and the heyday are over. With the characteristic caution of our race, we have watched over Germany’s prostrate figure for more than three years before satisfying ourselves that it had no power to rise; that our manhood might therefore be safely trusted with a “permitted hour” or two more, a bonus or two less.
It is ironical that we are at profound peace with all our late enemies but Turkey. We are at perfect amity with Germany, from whom we are having the greatest difficulty in obtaining the agreed indemnity – not a penny of it has yet reached the British Exchequer – and by whom we are also been harassed commercially.
With Turkey, frankly bankrupt, neither able to pay us an indemnity, nor to vex our trade, we are still officially at war. With Ireland and the insurgents of India we are technically at peace, although from both quarters we are threatened most actively and dangerously.
It seems that we must exercise constant diligence towards those with whom we are at peace, and can afford to be negligent of those with whom we are at war.
In this country we have great veneration for legal forms, and no doubt many people derive real satisfaction from the pretty fiction that a state of war ended on August 31st 1921, though we all know that it must be many a weary August before real peace reigns, and in the world, or in the British Empire, or in our own little island.
From Royal Signals web Site:
https://www.royalsignalsmuseum.co.uk/on-this-day-31st-august/
On the 31st August 1921 the First World War ended
Many consider that the First World War to have ended with the Armistice on 11 November 1918 but it did not end officially until almost three years later.
Why the discrepancy?
When passed by Parliament the Termination of the Present War (Definition) Act 1918 gave discretion to His Majesty in Council to declare the date of the termination of the war. Consequently war with each of the Central Powers ended close to the date of the ratification of the various peace treaties:
Germany on 10 January 1920
Austria on 16 July 1920
Bulgaria on 9 August 1920
Hungary on 26 July 1921
A treaty with Turkey had yet to be ratified (the end of the war with Turkey was not declared until 6 August 1924), it was decided that 31 August 1921 ‘should be treated as the date of the termination of the present War’.
Territorial Forces ordered to remain in uniform
One of the consequences of the Act was that those who had enlisted and signed up ‘for the duration of the war’ could be ordered to remain in uniform and this was the case for many, including Territorial Force soldiers, who were serving abroad. This explains the number of Territorial Force soldiers attached to the Indian Signal Service (from 1921 the Indian Signal Corps) during the Third-Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, and the Waziristan Campaigns of 1919-1920 and 1921-1924. It also explains why the Commonwealth War Graves Commission commemorates all of those who died while in uniform between 4 August 1914 and 31 August 1921.