Pen-Elayne on the Web

Mother of All Peace

Both Elaine of Kalilily and Jenny (links at sidebar) remind us of the origin of Mother's Day in this country as a day of peace, a call by Julia Ward Howe (who also wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" which inspired Beth Osnes to pun the homonym and rewrite the lyrics as the "Battle Her of the Republic") in 1870 for women to wage a general strike against war. Naturally, this isn't even recognized in most mainstream accounts of the holiday's origin. (I should note that Mothering Sunday in the UK is not the same as Mother's Day in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; the former is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and was March 30 this year.)

As the biological determinism of Howe's argument went, We women of one country / Will be too tender of those of another country / To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. I'd like to think there's a whole mess o' men who feel this way as well nowadays, but as Geov Parrish of Working for Change notes, "Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare." So Howe's words ring now as truly as ever they did:

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.

Parrish also notes that "Around the country, her original Mother's Day Proclamation will be the basis this year for parades, remembrances, and other events that try to reclaim the holiday's original spirit in a year when the United States' (male-dominated) government talks seriously not of avoiding war, but which ones to start next." Here's one link to things going on today. Something tells me Israel may be excepted.