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 carresses 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 vindicate 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take
council 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.
