There were tears of joy, speeches of hope and sighs of relief that all had gone smoothly after an extraordinary century-old document – reputedly seven miles long – completed its transatlantic trip back to Wales.
The peace petition, signed by almost three-quarters of all Welsh women in the 1920s but forgotten until the last few years, arrived at the National Library of Wales on Wednesday after being gifted to the country by the National Museum of American History in Washington.
Over the coming weeks and months, the reams of sheets will be taken carefully out of the hefty oak chest where they are stored, then digitised at the library in Aberystwyth, before a crowd-sourcing exercise takes place to transcribe all 390,296 signatures and addresses.
Prof Mererid Hopwood, the chair of the Peace Petition Partnership, said she was so excited she could hardly breathe and, though it was an overcast day in Wales, quoted the Welsh phrase mae’r haul yn gwenu – the sun smiles.
“Actually, I think the sun’s practically chuckling with joy in Aberystwyth today. We are so very delighted,” she said.
In 1923, galvanised by the horrors of the first world war, a group of Welsh women decided to organise a campaign for world peace.
During a Welsh League of Nations Union (WLNU) conference at Aberystwyth University, they agreed that the best way would be to appeal to the women of the US to work with them for a world without war. Two paid officers and 400 local organisers set about collecting names from every community in Wales.
In 1924 the Welsh delegation, led by Annie Hughes-Griffiths, the chair of the WLNU, crossed the Atlantic with the petition and worked with American women such as the women’s rights campaigner Carrie Chapman Catt to disseminate their message.
They received an enthusiastic welcome and travelled through the US addressing audiences. The US press claimed that if the signature sheets were laid end to end they would go on for 7 miles.
However, over the years the petition was forgotten, until a mysterious plaque mentioning it was uncovered at the time of the centenary of the first world war in Cardiff’s Temple of Peace.
“It was a lost story, a hidden story,” said Hopwood, a poet and the chair of Welsh and Celtic studies at Aberystwyth University.
She said the idea of returning the petition to Wales was both to remind people of its amazing story and to inspire people today to campaign for peace.
Hopwood pointed out that Wales has a history of its citizens working for peace, including Henry Richard, the 19th-century “apostle of peace”, who was secretary of the Peace Society for 40 years, and the women who marched from Wales to Greenham Common in Berkshire in 1981 to protest against nuclear weapons.
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She said the petition was inclusive. “Anyone living in Wales can claim a connection with it. Maybe the person who used to live in their house signed it.
“If they live on a new housing estate, perhaps the woman of the farm that used to stand on that land signed it.”
The Welsh deputy minister for arts and sport, Dawn Bowden, said it was an inspiring document: “I hope that the return of the petition to Wales will inspire and motivate a new generation of advocates for peace.”
Dafydd Tudur, the head of digital services at the National Library of Wales, called it an “historic” day.
He said he hoped a pilot of the crowd-sourcing exercise would take place in the autumn, before fully beginning next year. An exhibition will be organised to present the chest and petition at three locations – Aberystwyth, St Fagans in south Wales, and Wrexham in the north.
Tudur studied modern Welsh history but had not heard of the petition until the plaque was found. “It was forgotten. People are amazed when they hear about it,” he said.
