This drawing touches the highest level of the draughtsman's art and
demonstrates the unique power of the pencil in a master hand. So simple,
so true, so complete, so direct and so eloquent is the message that
words can add nothing to it. They can only pay a tribute of
appreciation.
Everybody can read the meaning at a glance; none can read it wholly
unmoved. For here is pure humanity, which none can escape, the primal
instinct without which man that is born of woman would not be. Before
this weak, bowed, and homely figure Knowledge is silent, Pride and
Passion are rebuked. Strength is shamed. Motherhood and mother-love
transcend them all.
There is here nothing of anger, no thought of hostility or revenge, no
trace of evil passion. Only a mother yearning after her son and pleading
to another mother, the Divine type of motherhood, the Mother of God. And
what she asks is so little, only to see him again. She has given him, as
the mother to whom she prays gave her Son, and she does not demand him
back. She reproaches no one, accuses no one, makes no complaint and no
claim for herself, but meekly pleads that she may be allowed to see him
again to still the longing in her breast. She is a woman of the people,
a simple peasant, but she personifies all mothers in every war, as she
bows her silvered head in humble prayer at the way-side shrine.