Mothers Day Proclaimation from 1870

Mothers Day Proclamation


Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided 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 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 does not wipe out 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,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress,
not of Caesar,
But of God.

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
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.

- Julia Ward Howe, 1870

I wonder if Neville Chamberlain wasn't reading too much Julia Ward Howe when he gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler so as to avoid the sword. Perhaps if he urged England to disarm as well they could be speaking German today and the beer would be better.

And an untold number more innocent people would have died horribly.