Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water
or of fears!

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 devasted 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 plow 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 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.

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.
 

CHAPTER XV

A WOMAN'S PEACE CRUSADE

I had felt a great opposition to Louis Napoleon from the period of the infamous act of treachery and violence which made
him emperor. The Franco-Prussian war was little understood by the world at large. To us in America its objects were
entirely unknown. On general principles of good-will and sympathy we were as much grieved as surprised at the continual defeats sustained by the French. For so brave and soldierly a nation to go through such a war without a single
victory seemed a strange travesty of history. When to the immense war indemnity the conquerors added the spoliation of
two important provinces, indignation added itself to regret. The suspicion at once suggested itself that Germany had very
willingly given a pretext for the war, having known enough of the demoralized condition of France to be sure of an easy
victory, and intending to make the opportunity serve for the forcible annexation of provinces long coveted.

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. I did not dare to make this public without the
advice of some wise counselor, and sought such an one in the person of Rev. Charles T. Brooks of Newport, a beloved
friend and esteemed pastor.

The little document which I drew up in the heat of my enthusiasms implored woman, all the world over, to awake to the
knowledge of the sacred right vested in them as mothers to protect the human life which costs them so many pangs. I did
not doubt but that my appeal would find a ready response in the hearts of great numbers of women throughout the limits
of civilization. I invited these imagined helpers to assist me in calling and holding a congress of women in London, and at
once began a wide task of correspondence for the realization of this plan. My first act was to have my appeal translated
into various languages, to wit: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and to distribute copies of it as widely as
possible. I devoted the next two years almost entirely to correspondence with leading women in various countries. I also
had two important meetings in New York, at which the cause of peace and the ability of women to promote it were
earnestly presented. At the first of these, which took place in the late autumn of 1870, Mr. [William Cullen] Bryant gave
me his venerable presence and valuable words. At the second, in the spring following, David Dudley Field, an eminent
member of the New York bar, and a lifelong advocate of international arbitration, made a very eloquent and convincing
address.
 

[after several pages about the problems of women finding a public platform in those days, Howe writes of the end of her
plans on page 341:] The ladies who spoke in public in those days mostly confined their labors to the advocacy of woman
suffrage, and were not much interested in my scheme of a world-wide portest of women against the cruelties of war.

Howe was a member of Channing Memorial Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Newport, RI.

Bibliography
WORDS FOR THE HOUR, Boston, 1857.
SEX AND EDUCATION, editor, Boston, 1874.
MODERN SOCIETY, Boston, 1881