How Mother's Day started


I will post this every year until the carnage stops

Julia Ward Howe was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, not exactly what you'd call a bleeding-heart liberal kind of poem.

The following has been passed around a bit, but it's worth reprinting rather than just pointing you at my page from last year or someone else's page. Because Julia is the one who called for the first Mothers' Peace Day Observance, and here is her proclamation of the real goals of Mothers' Day in the United States:


Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Posted: Sun - May 13, 2007 at 08:54 PM   Home         | | View Technorati reactions

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