MOTHER’S DAY IS A PLEA FOR PEACE!

"We 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 the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice…."
Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Recently, with other visitors to Colonial Williamsburg, I participated in a historical re-enactment of a militia training session.  As we stood shoulder to shoulder, harangued by “officers,” “shot” by musket, and rushed by bayonets, a shudder went through the line of adults and children.  We were to be turned into killing machines.  

I thought of my father, a World War II infantryman, and the fear and injury he suffered as he endured basic training to turn him from a loving son, brother, husband and neighbor to a weapon of war.  As his daughter, I have tried to work for a peaceful future for our children and ourselves.  As Mother’s Day approaches, I find strength in Julia Ward Howe’s proclamation, printed below.

Want to do something special for Mother's Day?  Join the Peace Alliance’s Peace Wants a Piece of the Pie Mother’s Day Campaign to include peacebuilding in the national budget.  Information at this link: http://www.thepeacealliance.org/take-action/campaigns/mothers-day-2012.html

Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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 taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow 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 & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

[This text can be found in numerous sources.  This version is from http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/0000/1870_howe_mothers-day_print.htm ]

Biography of Julia Ward Howe (from Waging Peace.org)

US feminist, reformer, and writer Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819 in New York City. She married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston, a physician and social reformer. After the Civil War, she campaigned for women rights, anti-slavery, equality, and for world peace. She published several volumes of poetry, travel books, and a play. She became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She was an ardent antislavery activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1862, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. She wrote a biography in 1883 of Margaret Fuller, who was a prominent literary figure and a member of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalists. She died in 1910.