The Idaho scimitar. [volume] (Boise, Idaho) 1907-1908, 1908-05-30
WOmdn'S PAGE
Roosevelt to the Mothers.

Mothers day was recognized ana celebrated III
many towns and cities of the nation Sunday last.
In harmony with this initial recognition of the
mothers of the land, it is BETTING reproduce here
what President Roosevelt said to the international
Mothers Congress at their meeting in Washington,
March 10th last:
1t is great pleasure to greet you here this after
noon. | receive many societies here in the White
House, many organizations of good men and women.
striving do all that in them lies for the betterment
of our social and civic condition. [ am glad to see
them l believe in their work. l want to help them.
But there is other society which L am quite as
glad to receive as this This is the one body that
put ahead of the veterans of the Civil War; be-
cause when all is said it is the mother, and the
mother only, who is better citizen even than the
soldier who fights for his country The successful
mother, the mother who does her part IN rearing and
training Alright the boys and girls who are to be the
and women of the next generation, is of greater
to the community and occupies, if she only would
realize it, more honorable, as well as more 1mpor-
tant position than any successful man in it.
Now | want you to think of what | have just said;
never say what don't absolutely mean, and I
accustomed to weighing my words. The good
mother, the wise mother-you cannot be a good
mother if you are not wise mothers more impor
tant to the community than even the ablest man; her
is worthy of honor and is more useful to
the community than the career OF any man, however
successful, can be.
Nothing in this life that is really worth having
comes save at the cost of effort. [ am glad when
meet who have fought for their country, have
served faithfully and well year after year for their
country at the risk of their own lives respect them
because they have had something hard to do and have
done it we'll When look back to the Civil War,
the whom we hold in honor are not the men who
stayed at home, but the who, whether they wore
the blue the grey, proved their truth by their
endeavor who dared risk all for the great prize of
death in battle, one OF Our nobleSt poets has
phrased it. who spent year after at what brought
them no money reward, at what might result in the
utter impairment of the chance of their earning their
livelihood, because it their duty to render that
service. In just the way no life of self-ndul-
gence, of vap1d pleasure, possibly, even IN
the point of pleasure itself, yield ample
ward to the mother at the cost of self-de-
nia of effort of suffering in childbirth of the long,
SLOW patience-trying work of bringing up the
children Alright No scheme of education, social
attitude be right unless it is based fundamentally
upon the recognition of the necessity of seeing that
the girl is trained to understand the supreme dignity
the supreme usefulness of motherhood Unless the
average woman is good wife and good mother, I'M
less she bears sufficient number OF Children so that
the shall increase and not decrease unless she
brings up these children sound III soul and mind and
body-unless this is true of the average woman,
brilliancy of genius no material prosperity, no tr-
umphs of science and industry will avail to the
race from ruin and death. The mother is the
supreme asset of national fe she is important
by far than the successful statesman business
or artist scientist
There are exceptional women there are exceptional
men, who have other tasks to perform in addition
to- in substitution for, the task of motherhood
and fatherhood the task of providing the home and
of keeping it. But it is the tasks connected with the
home that the fundamental tasks of humanity
After ALL get along for the time being with
inferior quality of in other lines POLITICAL
business of any kind; because if there fangs
in such matters we can make them good in the next
but if the mother does not do her duty,
there will either be no next generation or next
generation that is worse than at all. In other
words we cannot a nation get along at all if
haven't the right kind of home life Such life not
only the supreme duty, but also the supreme
ward of duty Every rightly constituted woman or
man. if she he is worth her or his salt, must feel
that there is such ample reward to be found any
dofcL of