On May 26th, 1852, H.M.S. Birkenhead troop carrier was delivering soldiers to war in South Africa. At 2 a.m. she struck uncharted rocks off Cape of Good Hope. Six hundred forty-two souls were on board including seven women and thirteen children. As the ship sank and lifeboats were launched, thirty-eight year-old Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Seton instigated what has become known as the “Birkenhead Drill”—the sending out and saving of “women and children first;” and it changed maritime protocol forever. A history of the 74th Highlanders, of which group the Birkenhead was a part, says the action on the Birkenhead “sheds more glory upon those who took part than a hundred well-fought battles.”
What the best of men live out, as exemplified by the “Birkenhead Drill,” is that there is nothing more important than mothers and children. And Mother’s Day is not first and foremost about mothers, but about their children. It seems fitting to remember that in its very origins, from its very beginning, Mother’s Day was never just about private family love or parent-child love.
Mothers Day has always been about care for all the children of the world, grown and small. The first Mothers' Day proclamation in this country, by Julia Ward Howe, particularly embodies Jesus’ command to his “little children” to “love one another as I have loved you.”
In 1870 Julia Ward Howe became increasingly distressed over what she heard of a war far away in Europe—the Franco-Prussian War. As she thought about it, she was struck with a sudden horror of the cruel and unnecessary character of the war—so barbaric it was, so much bloodshed and death. And it occurred to her: Why don't the mothers of mankind interfere in this, to prevent the waste of that human life which mothers alone bear and know the cost?
So she wrote what she called a “Mothers' Day Proclamation,” and with the encouragement and advice of her friend and pastor, Charles Brooks, she began to send it to women “throughout the limits of civilization.”
She implored all women “to awake to the knowledge of the sacred right vested in them as mothers to protect the human life which costs them so many pangs.” It was translated into several languages, and she single-mindedly devoted all of her time to corresponding with women about it, imploring them to work for peace. Her proclamation said, in part:
“Arise, then, 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 (children) 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 (children) to be trained to injure theirs.’ As men have often forsaken the plow 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 counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.”
Mothers serve best their children and families by loving as God loves—the God who through Hosea says, “I am God and not male.” By doing so, these mothers shed more glory on motherhood “than a hundred well-fought battles.”
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