The hope for peace has been around a long time. Pete Seeger’s song “Study War No More” came from a Negro spiritual and its often thought the words “Down by the Riverside” referred to the Ohio River. The song encouraged and pointed the way for slaves to escape to freedom.
A “Mother’s Day for Peace”* was promoted by suffragette Julia Ward Howe in 1870. In her Mother’s Day Proclamation, she beckoned mothers, the world over, to ask that their husbands and sons would no longer be killed in wars. She called upon mothers to band together to promote the “amicable settlement of international questions, (with) the great and general interests of peace.”
And one might ask what ever happened to Armistice Day? Armistice is Latin for “to stand (still) arms”. It was celebrated on Nov 11 to celebrate the end of WWI. In 1938, it became known as a day dedicated to world peace and became an official holiday. But war is such an integral part of our culture, it served our militarism to honor the lives lost and Armistice became Veterans Day and peace again took a back seat in 1954.
As someone who has understood the intrinsic need we all have to feel peace, I am often perplexed at the silence from those who, by default, continually support war. I understand our economy is now based in militarism with the sales of arms to friends and foe. I get that women have lost their voices to Hallmark, and that false rationales and reasonings dictate the need for war, but seriously, what will it take for the majority of us to recognize that peace is not only possible but is truly our only way out?
We’ve studied war. It’s time we study peace.
The original Mothers’ Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe, 1870:
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, 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 vindicate 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 council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, 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.
Study War No More / Down By the Riverside – Pete Seeger
let kindness win 