WOMEN AND WAR

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 1, 3 January 1923, Page 6

WOMEN AND WAR

Wβ women teach our little sons Siow wrong ignoble blows are; school and church Support our precepts, and inoculate The growing niinds with thoughts of love and peace. "Let dogs delight to bark; and bite," we say; But -human beings with immortal souls, Must rise above the methods of a brute, And walk with reason, and wjth selfcontrol. And then-*-dear God!—you men—you wise, strong men, Our self-announced superiors in brain, , Our peers in judgment—you go forth to war! You leap at one another, mutilate And starve and kill your fellow men, and ask The world's applause for such heroic deeds. ' You boast arid strut; and if no song is sung, No l;audatory epic writ in blood, Telling how many widows you • have made, Why, then, perforce, you say our bards are dead And inspiration sleeps, to wake no more. ; ' • And we, the women, we whose lives you are— What can we do but sit in silent homes And wait and suffer? Not for us the blare Of trumpets and the bugle's call to arms— For us no banners, no supreme Triumphant hour of conquest. Ours the slow

Dread torture of uncertainty, each day The bootless battle with the same despair; A.ud when at last your victories reach our ears There reaches with them, to our pitying hearts, The thought of countless homes made desolate, And other v.'omen weeping for their dead.O men, wise men, superior beings, say * . Is there no substitute for war in this Great age and era? If you answer "N0, , - , Then let us rear our children to be wolves, And teach them from the cradle how to kill. Why should we women waste our time and words In talking peace, when men declare for war? —Ella Wheeleer Wilcox.