Page:Women and war, an appeal to the women of all nations.djvu/11

 Rh are one in having to bear war's burdens of bereavement, poverty, misery.

When women obtain the franchise, they will have the power to affect legislation. It is this which explains the strenuous efforts of educated women for equal suffrage. They are convinced that perplexing difficulties of legislation need the mother-heart as well as the father-heart to solve them. The mothers of mankind alone know the cost of human life! Therefore they should be to the front in its preservation. The appeal of Julia Ward Howe at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, imploring women to awake to their duties of peace-making, made small impression. She was a pioneer, and as such, "before her time." But her call is being listened to at the present moment. Women are awake to the irrationality of war, as well as to its horrors! And Suffrage or no Suffrage, women hold a key to the solution of this question.

The children of to-day are the makers of the destiny of to-morrow. Mothers have the first moulding of their minds.

Let mothers, having learnt "the better way than war for the settlement of international disputes," instil into their boys' and girls' minds teaching against war. Let them explain the fallacies which underlie the present state of things. Teach the difference between true and sham patriotism. Ask the children "Why make death and pain artificially over and above what naturally exists?" Show them that the ultimate victory is largely dependent on the "pertinacious power of the purse." That at the present day the only excuse we can make is "that our ancestors did it." That nowadays war is killing by machinery, not the hand to hand conflict of our forefathers; that disasters are common now through the instrumentality of war, such as are specially abhorrent—railway accident, shipwreck, explosions of war