HISTORY, Mother's Day originally a call for peace

You learn the darnedest things on blogs...

Hullaballo (Digby):

It's unfashionable and vaguely unpatriotic these days to talk about "peace" but back in 1870, it was a pretty compelling concept. As the country was still reeling from the effects of the civil war and still dealt daily with its consequent illness, poverty, injury and death, feminist Julia Ward Howe wrote the following proclamation creating a Mother's Day convention and a demand for "the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace." How quaint.

Digby includes this video from Brave New Foundation which created Mother's Day for Peace.

For more information on Mother's Day and Julia Ward Howe, see Wikipedia. Shit, she was an abolitionist who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" too.

I like the end of Julia Ward Howe's poem:

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And 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.

It is my belief that if we are to end the use of war and other forms of organized violence as tools for arbitrating disputes we need to replace war with other methods for handling these disputes. Specifically, we should improve international political and legal institutions for arbitrating conflict.