Rights
All content on this site is made available for personal research and private study only. Any other reuse, reproduction, or re-purposing may require the permission of the rightsholder(s); please contact the UPEI Library or the Clyde River Historical Society for more information on permissions/clearances.
Editors Note
The war may have been over but the suffering continued. Labour movements had been building momentum throughout the war. Strikes were rampant. -- The Paris Peace Conference began on January 18th, 1919, included delegates from 27 nations and resulted in the Treaty of Versailles with Germany and subsequent treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. The Treaty of Versailles placed full blame for the war and a tremendous financial burden on Germany, which is believed to have created the conditions for the later rise of Nazism which led to WWII. World War 1 casualties were estimated to be somewhere between 9 and 11 million military. The estimate for civilian casualties is somewhere around 8 million. -- The army camps were rife with flu, and when the soldiers returned home, the virus spread to their families and communities. Estimates were between 20 and 40 million died within a year and a half after the war, but current estimates are much higher at 100 million. It was referred to as the Spanish Flu. Spain was neutral during the war. The Allied countries suppressed the news about the flu, but in Spain they freely reported on the illness, so people associated it with them.
