Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1917-02-08
What Do Women Know About WARP

In the telegram sent to Chairman
Davies of the judiciary yesterday
asking the committee to report fought
not to pass' on the suffrage resolu-
ton because OF the impending crisis
and the possibility of charging the
electorate by body of inexperienced
and emotional women" we face again
the anti argument that women ought
not TO vote because they cannot
tight" and that women know nothing
about war" We can do no better in
reply than to quote from a speech of
DIR. Shaw's given in Alabama in 1915
She had seen the headlines of a paper
which stated 1850, 900 men killed since
the war began"
Two hundred and fifty thousand
dead men," she said mo woman can
comprehend the meaning of such hor-
rible slaughter. The horror of it alone
would drive her mad 1t means that
100000 strong, splendid men lie dead;
tho rivers with their dead bodies, fill
ing the trenches with the dead and dy-
ing: their blood minging with the
waters of rivers turns them to GRIM
son.
Il for one cannot comprehend the
horror of such slaughter. But, If YOU
n toll hot T.
and IL ! were to look into the up
turned face of one dead soldier and see
It's pallor. I should know what one
woman knows about war. i should
know that years before. woman,
whose heart beat in sympathy with her
love and her desire for motherhood
had walked day by day with her face
TO an open grave with a courage which
no man has ever surpassed, that she
might become the mother Of a child
And should know that II she did not
NIL the grave as thousands upon thou
sands do. II she lived, and a tiny little
bit of helpless humanity was laid in
her arms. there went out from that
woman's heart cry so deep. so sacred
so fun OF hope, that II laid hold on the
INFINITE Himself. I should know that
that cry was not for herself but for
the tiny helpless being that laid in her
arms. that her boy might be worthy.
and that she might know as the years
went on. that he would live a life of
usefulness She did what all mothers
must do and what men have failed to
understand as the real significance and
price OF motherhood.
Men have failed to realize that wo
men are human. that they have the
same human ambitions and hopes and
aspirations and desires as have men,
that they desire to reach out and grasp
the problems OF life and solve them as
do men. that they long for intellectual
development and power as men do.
Men have not yet learned that women
are human. hence they as yet do not
realize that the mother lays all these
ambitions aside for herself. but she
never lays them aside for her boy. In
her Joy of motherhood. she forgets her
nights OF sleeplessness and her days Of
fatiguing toll year after year until at
last he has grown to be a man, and
she locking up into his eyes, beholds
him bone OF her bone. and flesh of her
flesh. aye and life of her life. for she
has carved out 30 years and more Of
her life and built them into the making
OF a man. In him she beholds the most
marvellous work OF God. for in all the
universe there is nothing more won
derful than q noble human being,
clean OF brain, and clean of heart.
strong Of limb. ambitious in his pur-
pose to lay hold Of life and to master