Mother's Day was to promote peace

To the editor:

Although plausible, Mother's Day was not invented by Hallmark. It was originally a day for women to show the necessity for living in peace rather than giving in to propaganda and the aggressions of war.

Julia Ward Howe's inspiring Mother's Day proclamation of 1870 set the stage for her later proclamations. She theorized that the only hope for civilization is for women to speak with a different kind of voice than men.

Women today would do well to heed her approach for expressing love of God and of humanity.

Arise then ... women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! ...

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!" ...

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, and each bearing after her own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

JOY BELL, Cape Girardeau