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Last
night I went to listen to one of my heroes of my youth
in Dublin’s Helix: Lou Reed. I saw old friends
there. And when, at the very end, after the third
encore, he began ‘The Perfect Day', in this Mother's
Day weekend, my mind wandered into the memory of my
mother (with the angels for a while now). And then,
unexpectedly, of the 1870 call by American poet and
women's leader Julia Ward Howe for the establishment
of the holiday. Did you know that what is now widely
viewed as a sentimental and silly-dippy tribute to
family was originally a call for women to wage a general
strike to end war?
The
radical origins of Mother's Day -- as a powerful feminist
call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil
War in 1870 -- are fully compatible with the universal
notion of honouring women, and particularly mothers.
Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers
of warfare.
In
the 20th Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent
of war's casualties around the world; mass and indiscriminate
attacks, popularised in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the Allied fire-bombings in Japan and
Germany, and the rape of Nanking, are only the most
spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women
become the rape and famine victims, the refugees,
the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the
wars of (older?) men.
I
admit it; I sent my departed mother flowers this year
- indirectly, through the Net, to a very old lady
I know. She appreciates them. But a greater gift for
the world's mothers still awaits: a day in which the
voices of women -- now, as then, less inclined to
rush to war or bask in its false glory -- are an equal
part in the foreign policy of countries like the United
States. As
with so many other aspects of American history --
May Day, just passed, is another -- a legacy that
is now celebrated around the world is farthest from
its original intent in the land of its birth. And
its satellites.
The
generals have written the American historical memory,
in the Civil War, in most popular narratives of the
bloody trail of modernizing "Western Civilization."
It's worth remembering that a political division that
lasted longer and was considered more intractable
than today's Palestine/Israel conflict or indefinite
"War on Terror," and that killed well over
a hundred times more people on American soil than
the attacks of September 11, was not unanimously lauded
at the time. And that women thought they could do
something to prevent such bloodshed in the future.
Here is the original, Mother's Day Proclamation, penned
in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:
Arise,
then, women of this day! Arise all women who have
hearts, Whether your 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 of 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 dishonour 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
then 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 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.
Maybe
soon.
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