Contd.....

Many other cultures have their own Mother's Day, but let's move to Boston in 1870, during the unpopular Franco-Prussian war. An amazing woman named Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), after writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, made an impassioned "appeal to womanhood" to rise against war in her Mothers Day Proclamation:


Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of 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 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."

To no one's surprise, her efforts to establish a formal Mother's Day for Peace were rebuffed.