THE PEACE CRUSADE
1870-1872; _aet._ 51-53
ENDEAVOR
"What hast thou for thy scattered seed,
O Sower of the plain?
Where are the many gathered sheaves
Thy hope should bring again?"
"The only record of my work
Lies in the buried grain."
"O Conqueror of a thousand fields!
In dinted armor dight,
What growths of purple amaranth
Shall crown thy brow of might?"
"Only the blossom of my life
Flung widely in the fight."
"What is the harvest of thy saints,
O God! who dost abide?
Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs
In blood and sorrow dyed?
What have thy servants for their pains?"
"This only,--to have tried."
J. W. H.
When a branch is cut from a vigorous tree, Nature at once sets to work
to adjust matters. New juices flow, new tissues form, the wound is
scarfed over, and after a time is seen only as a scar. Not here, but
elsewhere, does the new growth take place, the fresh green shoots
appear, more vigorous for the pruning.
Thus it was with our mother's life, as one change after another came
across it. Little Sam died, and her heart withered with him: then
religion and study came to her aid, and through them she reached
another blossoming time of thought and accomplishment Now, with the
marriage and departure of the children, still another notable change was
wrought, rather joyful than sorrowful, but none the less marking an
epoch.
Up to this time (1871) the wide, sunny rooms of the house on Beacon Hill
had been filled with young, active life. The five children, their
friends, their music, their parties, their talk and laughter, kept youth
and gayety at full tide: the green branches grew and blossomed.
For all five she had been from their cradle not only mistress of the
revels and chief musician, but spur and beacon of mind and soul.
Now four of the five were transplanted to other ground. Many women,
confronting changes like these, say to themselves, "It is over. For me
there is no more active life; instead, the shelf and the chimney
corner." This woman, lifting her eyes from the empty spaces, saw
Opportunity beckoning from new heights, and moved gladly to meet her.
Now, as ever, she "staked her life upon the red."
The empty spaces must be filled. Study no longer sufficed: the need of
serving humanity actively, hand and foot, pen and voice, was now urgent.
Her first work under this new impulse was for peace. The Franco-Prussian
War of 1870 made a deep and painful impression upon her. She had felt a
bitter dislike for Louis Napoleon ever since the day when he "stabbed
France in her sleep" by the _Coup d'État_ of December, 1851; but she
loved France and the French people; the overwhelming defeat, the bitter
humiliation suffered by them filled her with sorrow and indignation. In
a lecture on Paris she says: "The great Exposition of 1867 had drawn
together an immense crowd from all parts of the world. Among its
marvels, my recollection dwells most upon the gallery of French
paintings, in which I stood more than once before a full-length portrait
of the then Emperor.[70] I looked into the face which seemed to say: 'I
have succeeded. What has any one to say about it?' And I pondered the
slow movements of that heavenly Justice whose infallible decrees are not
to be evaded."
[70] Napoleon III.
Her "Reminiscences" say: "As I was revolving these matters in my mind,
while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling
of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a
return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have
been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, 'Why
do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the
waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?' I
had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and
its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I
could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that
of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I
then and there composed."
This appeal is dated Boston, September, 1870.
APPEAL TO WOMANHOOD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and
power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder.
Again have the sacred questions of international justice been
committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day
of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has
been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the
bloody exchanges of the battle-field. Thus men have done. Thus men
will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings
which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions
of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to
say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word
should now be heard, and answered to as never before.
Arise, then, Christian 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 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 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, man as the
brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred
impress, not of Cæsar, 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.
The appeal was translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and
Swedish, and sent broadcast far and wide.
In October our mother wrote to Aaron Powell, president of the American
Peace Society: "The issue is one which will unite virtually the whole
sex. God gave us, I think, the word to say, but it ought to be followed
by immediate and organizing action.... Now, you, my dear sir, are bound,
as a Friend and as an Advocate of Peace, to take especial interest in
this matter, so I call upon you a little confidently, hoping that you
will help my unbusinesslike and unskilful hands to go on with this good
work. I wish to avoid occasioning any confusion in the different
meetings and organizations of the Woman Suffrage Movement. But I should
wish to move for various meetings in which the matter of my appeal, the
direct intervention of Woman in the Pacification of the World, should be
discussed, and the final move of a general Congress promoted. Please
take hold a little now and help me. I have wings but no feet nor
hands--rather, only a voice, '_vox et praeterea nihil_.'"
The next step was to call together those persons supposedly interested
in such a movement. In December, 1870, it was announced that a meeting
"for the purpose of considering and arranging the steps necessary to be
taken for calling a World's Congress of Women in behalf of International
Peace" would be held in Union League Hall, Madison Avenue and
Twenty-sixth Street, New York, on Friday, December 23. The announcement,
which sets forth the need for and objects of such a congress, is signed
by Julia Ward Howe, William Cullen Bryant, and Mary F. Davis.
The meeting was an important one: there were addresses by Lucretia Mott,
Octavius Frothingham, and Alfred Love, the Peace prophet of
Philadelphia; letters from John Stuart Mill, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and
William Howard Furness, who adjures peace-lovers to "labor for the
establishment of a Supreme Court to which all differences between
nations shall be referred for settlement."
Mrs. Howe made the opening address, from which we quote these words:--
"So I repeat my call and cry to women. Let it pierce through dirt and
rags--let it pierce through velvet and cashmere. It is the call of
humanity. It says: 'Help others, and you help yourselves.'"
* * * * *
"Let the woman seize and bear about the prophetic word of the hour, and
that word becomes flesh, and dwells among men. This rapturous task of
hope, this perpetual evangel of good news, is the woman's special
business, if she only knew it.
"Patience and passivity are sometimes in place for women--not always. I
think of this when I go to women, intelligent and charming, who warn me
off with white hands, unaccustomed to any graver labor than that of
gesticulation. 'Don't ask me to work,' they say; 'I cannot do it. God
always raises up a set of people to do these things, like the
Anti-Slavery people, and they set to work to do them.' And then I want
to say to these friends: 'God can raise you up too, and I hope He will.'
"As for what one can or cannot do, remember that, active or passive, we
must work to live. If we have not real labor, we must have simulated
exercise. If we have not real objects, we must have fanciful caprices,
little less exertion than keeps us in the padded chair would take us out
of it, and send us to try whether nature has made any special exemption
in our cases, and whether the paralysis of our life need be traced
further outward than our self-centred heart....
"Would that I were still young, as are many of you; would at least that
I had followed the angel of my youth as gravely and steadfastly as he
invited me; but the world taught, applauded in another direction, and I
was at fault. But from this assembly a will might go forth, an earnest
will, quick with love, and heavy with meaning. And this will might say
to our sisters all over the world, 'Trifle no more.' If women did not
waste life in frivolity, men would not waste it in murder. For the
tenderness of the one class is set by God to restrain the violence of
the other."
The New York meeting was followed by one in Boston. In the spring of
1871 the friends of peace met in the rooms of the New England Woman's
Club, and formed an American Branch of the Women's International Peace
Association: Julia Ward Howe, president. It took five meetings to
accomplish this; the minutes of these meetings are curious and
interesting.
Mr. Moncure D. Conway wrote objecting strongly to the movement being
announced as Christian: his objections were courteously considered.
* * * * *
"Mrs. Howe gave her reasons for making her Appeal in the name of
Christianity. She found the doctrine of peace and forgiveness of
injuries the most fundamental of the Christian doctrines. She thought it
proper to say so, but did not by this prevent the believers in other
religions from asserting the same doctrine, if considered as existing in
those religions."
Mr. Conway's objection was overruled.
The object of the association was "to promote peace, by the study and
culture of its conditions." A "notice" appended to the constitution
announced, "This Association proposes to hold a World's Congress of
Women, in London, in the summer of 1872, in which undertaking the
cooperation of all persons is earnestly invited."
Before continuing the story of this peace crusade, we return to the
Journal. The volume for 1871 is fragmentary, the entries mostly brief
and far apart. Written and blank pages are alike significant of the
movement going on in her mind, the steadily growing desire and resolve
to dedicate her life, as her husband had dedicated his, to the highest
needs of humanity.
"_January 20._ Have been ill all these days. Had a divine glimpse this
day, between daylight and dusk, of something like this--a beautiful
person splendidly dressed entering a theatre as I have often done with
entire delight and forgetfulness of everything else, and the restraining
hand of Christ holding me back in the outer darkness--the want and woe
of the world, and saying, 'The true drama of life is _here_.' Oh! that
restraining hand had in it the true touch, communicating knowledge of
human sorrow and zeal for human service. Never may I escape it to my
grave!"[2]
* * * * *
"I confess that I value more those processes of thought which explain
history than those which arraign it. I would not therefore in my
advocacy of peace strip one laurel leaf from the graves so dear and
tender in our recollection. Our brave men did and dared the best which
the time allowed. The sorrow for their loss was none the less brought
upon us by those who believed in the military method. It is not in
injustice to them that I listen while the Angel of Charity says:
'Behold, I show you a more excellent way.' Again, 'Come now, let us
reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as wool.' This treating of injuries from the high ground of
magnanimity is the action that shall save the world."
* * * * *
"The special faults of women are those incidental to a class that has
never been allowed to work out its ideal."
* * * * *
"Must work to earn some money, but will not sacrifice greater ends to
this one."
* * * * *
"Hear that the Greek mission is given to an editor in Troy, New York.
Sad for Greece and for Chev, who longs so to help her."
* * * * *
"Civil liberty is that which the one cannot have without the many, or
the many without the one. The liberty of the State, like its solvency,
concerns and affects all its citizens. Equal sacredness of rights is its
political side, equal stringency of duties its moral side. The virtue of
single individuals will not give them civil liberty in a despotic state,
but the only safeguard of civil liberty to all is the virtue of each
individual."
* * * * *
"You men by your vice and selfishness have created for women a hideous
profession, whose ranks you recruit from the unprotected, the innocent,
the ignorant. This is the only profession, so far as I know, that man
has created for women.
"We will create professions for ourselves if you will allow us
opportunity and deal as fairly with the female infant as with the male.
Where, even in this respect, do we find your gratitude? We instruct your
early years. You keep instruction from our later ones.
"French popular authors have satirized American women freely. Let them
remember that French literature has done much to corrupt American women.
Unhappy Paris has corrupted the world. She is now swept from the face of
the earth."
France was constantly in her thoughts.
"The _morale_ of the _Commune_, that which has commended it to good
people, has undoubtedly been a supposed resistance to the return of
absolutism, which the Versailles Government was supposed covertly to
represent.... No matter what advantage of reason the _Commune_ may have
had over the Versailles Government, the _Commune_ committed a civil
crime in attempting military enforcement of its political opinions. Such
was the crime which our South committed and which we resisted as one
defends one's own life. No overt military act of ours gave them the
advantage of a _casus belli_. They differed from us and determined to
coerce us forcibly. In that weltering mass of ruin and corruption which
was Paris, what lessons lie of the utter folly and futility of mutual
murder! What hearts of brothers estranged which time would have
harmonized! What hecatombs of weltering corpses poisoning the earth
which industry should make wholesome! What women demonized by passion,
forgetting all their woman's lore and skill, the appointed givers of
life speeding death and reaping the bitter fruit themselves! With this
terrible picture before us, let no civilized nation from henceforth and
forever admit or recognize the instrumentality of war as worthy of
Christian society. Let the fact of human brotherhood be taught to the
babe in his cradle, let it be taught to the despot on his throne. Let it
be the basis and foundation of education and legislation, the bond of
high and low, of rich and poor...."
"_May 27._ I am fifty-two years old this day and must regard this year
as in some sense the best of my life. The great joy of the Peace Idea
has unfolded itself to me.... I have got at better methods of working
in the practical matters at which I do work, and believe more than ever
in patience, labor, and sticking to one's own idea of work. Study,
book-work, and solitary thinking and writing show us only one side of
what we study. Practical life and intercourse with others supply the
other side. If I may sit at work on this day next year, I hope that my
peace matter will have assumed a practical and useful form, and that I
may have worked out my conception worthily.... I pray that neither Louis
Napoleon nor the Bourbons may return to feed upon France, but that
merciful measures, surely of God's appointing, may heal her deadly
wounds and uplift her prostrate heart. She must learn that the doctrine
of self is irreligious. The _Commune_ surely knew this just as little as
did Louis Napoleon. I want to keep eyesight enough to read Greek and
German, and my teeth for clear speaking and good digestion."
* * * * *
"Paul says: 'Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the
weak,' but now we that are weak bear the infirmities of the strong."
* * * * *
"Peace meeting at the Club. Read in Greek first part of the eighth
chapter of Matthew; the account given of the centurion seems very
striking in the Greek. The contrast of his Western mind with the Eastern
subtleties of Jew and Greek seems to have struck Christ. He supposed
Christ's power over unseen things to be like his own control over things
committed to his authority. Then Christ began, perhaps, to see that the
other nations of the world would profit by his work and doctrine before
his Jewish brethren."
* * * * *
"My first presidency at the New England Woman's Club.... I do not shine
in presiding over a business meeting and some others can do much better
than I. Still I think it best to fulfil all expected functions of
ordinary occasions, living and learning."
"... Negro Christianity. It is something of a very definite and touching
character--all forgiving, all believing, making a decided religious
impression of its own--the heart so ripe, the intellectual part so
little made out, like a fruit which might be all pulp and no fibre."
* * * * *
"On Sunday we bring back the worn and dim currency of our active life to
be redeemed by the pure gold of the Supreme Wisdom. I bring to church my
coppers and small pieces and take away a shining gold piece. Self is the
talent buried in the napkin no matter with how much of culture and
natural capacity. Till we get out of self we are in the napkin.
Hospitable entertainment of other people's opinions, brotherly
promotions of their interests--these acts make our five talents ten in
use to others and in enjoyment and profit to ourselves...."
"Christ's teaching about marriage. Its tender and sacred reciprocity.
Adultery among the Jews was only recognized as crime when committed by a
woman. The right of concubinage was too extensive to bring condemnation
for unchastity. The man might not steal another man's wife, but any
woman's husband might have intercourse with other women. Christ showed
how men did offend against this same law which worked so absolutely and
partially against women. An unchaste thought in the breast of the man
infringed the high law of purity. This teaching of the tender mutual
obligations of married life was probably new to many of his hearers.
"The present style of woman has really been fashioned by man, and is
only _quasi_ feminine.
"Peace meeting at Mystic, Connecticut. Spoke morning and afternoon, best
in the morning. The natural unfolding of reform. 'His purposes will
ripen fast'--Watts's verse. Providence does not plant so as to gather
all its crops in one day. First the flowers, then the fruits, then the
golden grain.
"John Fiske's lecture, first in the course on the theory of
Evolution.... Did not think the lecture a very profitable one, yet we
must be willing that our opposites should think and speak out their
belief."
* * * * *
In the spring of 1872 she went to England, hoping to hold a Woman's
Peace Congress in London. She also hoped to found and foster "a Woman's
Apostolate of Peace." These hopes were not then to be fulfilled: yet she
always felt that this visit, with all its labors and its
disappointments, was well worth while, and that much solid good came of
it, to herself and to others.
We have seen her in London as a bride, enjoying to the full its gayeties
and hospitality, as bright a vision as any that met her eyes, with a
companion to whom all doors opened eagerly. This was the picture of
1843; that of 1872 is different, indeed.
A woman of middle age, quiet in dress and manner, with a serene and
constant dignity; a face in which the lines of thought and study were
deepening year by year; eyes now flashing with mirth, now tender with
sympathy, always bright with the "high resolve and hardihood" for which,
but a few years before, she had been sighing: this was the woman who
came to London in 1872, alone and unaided; who, standing before the Dark
Tower of established Order and Precedent, might say with Childe
Roland,--
"Dauntless the slug horn to my lips I set,
And blew."
She spoke at the banquet of the Unitarian Association. "The occasion was
to me a memorable one." She hired the Freemasons' Tavern and preached
there on five or six successive Sundays.
"My procedure was very simple,--a prayer, the reading of a hymn, and a
discourse from a Scripture text.... The attendance was very good
throughout, and I cherished the hope that I had sown some seed which
would bear fruit hereafter."
She was asked to address meetings in various parts of England, speaking
in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Carlisle, with good
acceptance. In Cambridge she talked with Professor J. R. Seeley, whom
she found most sympathetic. She was everywhere welcomed by thoughtful
people, old friends and new, whether or no they sympathized with her
quest.
"_June 9._ My first preaching in London. Worked pretty much all day at
sermon, intending, not to read, but to talk it--for me, a difficult
procedure. At 4.30 P.M. left off, but brain so tired that nothing in it.
Subject, the kingdom of heaven.... Got a bad cup of tea--dressed (in my
well-worn black silk) and went to the Drawing-Room at Freemasons'
Tavern. God knows how I felt. 'Cast down but not forsaken.'... I got
through better than I feared I might. Felt the method to be the right
one, speaking face to face and heart to heart."
"_June 10._ Small beer going out of fashion leaves women one occupation
the less. Fools are still an institution; and will remain such."[71]
[71] "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer." _Othello._
"_June 16_.... A good attendance in spite of the heat.... Agonized over
my failure to come up to what I had designed to do in the discourse."
"_June 18_.... Saw the last of my dear friend E. Twisleton, who took me
to the National Gallery, where we saw many precious gems of art.... At
parting, he said: 'The good Father above does not often give so great a
pleasure as I have had in these meetings with you.' Let me enshrine this
charming and sincere word in my most precious recollection, from the man
of sixty-three to the woman of fifty-three."
"_June 27._ Left Leeds at 7 A.M., rising at 4.30.... To Miss [Frances
Power] Cobbe's, where met Lady Lyall, Miss Clough, Mrs. Gorton, Jacob
Bright, _et al._ Then to dinner with the dear Seeleys. An unceremonious
and delightful meal. Heart of calf. Then to John Ridley's.... Home
late, almost dead--to bed, having been on foot twenty hours."
"_July 4_.... Saw a sight of misery, a little crumb of a boy, barefoot,
tugging after a hand-organ man, also very shabby. Gave the little one a
ha'penny, all the copper I had. But in the heartache he gave me, I
resolved, God helping me, that my luxury shall henceforth be to minister
to human misery, and to redeem much time and money spent on my own
fancies, as I may...."
She had been asked to attend two important meetings as American
delegate: a peace congress in Paris, and a great prison reform meeting
in London.
The French meeting came first. She crossed the Channel, reaching Paris
in time to attend the principal _séance_ of the congress. She presented
her credentials, asked leave to speak, and was told "with some
embarrassment" that she might speak to the officers of the society, when
the public meeting should be adjourned! She makes no comment on this
proceeding, but says, "I accordingly met a dozen or more of these
gentlemen in a side room, where I simply spoke of my endeavors to enlist
the sympathies and efforts of women in behalf of the world's peace."
Returning to London, she had "the privilege of attending as a delegate
one of the great Prison Reform meetings of our day."
In 1843, Julia the bride would not have considered it a privilege to
attend a meeting for prison reform. She would have shrugged her
shoulders, would perhaps have pouted because the Chevalier cared more
for these things than for the opera, with Grisi, Mario, and Lablache:
she might even have written some funny verses about the windmill-tilting
of her Don Quixote. Now, she stood in the place that failing health
forbade him to fill, with a depth of interest, an earnestness of
purpose, equal to his own. She, too, now heard the sorrowful sighing of
the prisoners.
At one of the meetings of this congress, a jailer of the old school
spoke in defence of the system of flogging refractory prisoners, and
described in brutal fashion a brutal incident. Her blood was on fire:
she asked leave to speak.
"It is related," she said, "of the famous Beau Brummel that a gentleman
who called upon him one morning met a valet carrying away a tray of
neck-cloths, more or less disordered. 'What are these?' asked the
visitor; and the servant replied, 'These are our failures!' When I see
the dark coach which in our country carries the criminal to his place of
detention, I say, 'Society, here are your failures.'"
Her words were loudly applauded, and the punishment was voted down.
The Journal gives her further speech on this occasion: "Spoke of justice
to women. They had talked of fallen women. I prayed them to leave that
hopeless phrase. Every fallen woman represents a man as guilty as
herself, who escapes human detection, but whose soul lies open before
God. Speak of vicious, dissolute women, but don't speak of fallen women
unless you recognize the fall of man, the old doctrine."
Two days before this she had preached her last sermon in London. The
Journal says: "All Sunday at work upon my sermon, the last in London.
'Neither height nor depth, nor any other creature.' The sermon of high
and low, and the great unity beyond all dimensions. A good and to me a
most happy delivery of opinions and faith which I deeply hold.... So
ended my happy ministration in London, begun in fear and anxiety, ended
in certainty and renewed faith, which God continue to me."
August found her back at Oak Glen, exhausted in body and mind. She is
almost too tired to write in the Journal, and such entries as there are
only accentuate her fatigue.
"I am here at my table with books and papers, but feel very languid. My
arms feel as if there were no marrow in their bones. I suppose this is
reaction after so much work, but unless I can get up strength somehow I
shall not accomplish anything. Weakness in all my limbs. Have had my
Greek lesson and begun to read the Maccabees and the Apocrypha. I shall
probably come up after a few days, but feel at present utterly incapable
of exertion. I must help Maud--have helped her with music to-day...."
"Walked about with dear Chev, whose talk is always instructive. Every
break in our long-continued habits shows us something to amend in our
past lives. What do I see in mine after this long break? That I must
endeavor to have more real life and more religion. The passive and
contemplative following of thought, my own or other people's, must not
de-energize my sympathies and my will. I must daily consult the divine
will and standard which can help us to mould our lives aright without
running from one extreme to another. My heart's wish would now be to
devote myself to some sort of religious ministration. God can open a way
for this in which the spirit of my desire may receive the form of his
will. I must lecture this winter to earn some money and spread, I hope,
some good doctrine...."
* * * * *
Such was the beginning of her work for peace, which was to end only with
her life. Disappointed in her hope of a world congress, she turned the
current of her effort in a new direction. She would have a festival, a
day which should be called Mothers' Day, and be devoted to the advocacy
of peace doctrines. She chose the second day of June; for many years she
and her friends and followers kept this day religiously, with sweet and
tender observances which were unspeakably dear to her.
In 1876 there was a great peace meeting in Philadelphia. The occasion is
thus described by the Reverend Ada C. Bowles: "There were delegates from
France, Italy, and Germany, each with a burning desire to be heard, and
all worth hearing, but none able to speak English. The audience looked
to the anxious face of the President with sympathy; then a voice was
heard, 'Call for Mrs. Howe.' Those present will never forget how her
presence changed the meeting from a threatened failure to a noble
success. The German, Frenchman, and Italian stood in turn by her side.
At the proper moment she lifted a finger, and then gave in her perfect
English each speech in full to the delight of the delegates and the
admiration of all."
The last celebration of her Mothers' Day was held in Riverton, New
Jersey, on June 1, 1912, by the Pennsylvania Peace Society, in
conjunction with the Universal Peace Union. On the printed invitation to
this festival we read
"Aid it, paper, aid it, pen,
Aid it, hearts of earnest men.
"Julia Ward Howe, 1874."
And further on, "Thirty-nine years ago Julia Ward Howe instituted this
festival for peace,--a time for the women and children to come together;
to meet in the country, invite the public, and recite, speak, sing and
pray for 'those things that make for peace.'"