A Mother’s Day holiday was first envisioned in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe (of the Battle Hymn of the Republic fame) who was still reeling from the carnage of the Civil War when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, when she declared that there should be a day where mothers of the world unite to promote peace and social justice. That was 1870. Maybe we should try that again. But I still believe that no mother looking at her baby wishes him or her anything but peace and happiness, and that as Jean Giraudoux first said, “There is nothing wrong with the world that a sensible woman [especially a mother] could not settle in an afternoon.”
