Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1919 — Mothers’ Part in Warfare [ARTICLE]

Mothers’ Part in Warfare

Agonies of Suspense Reflected in Face of Each One That Has Son With Army. ? The late Robert J. Burdette of the Burlington Hawkeye, and of beloved memory, was a soldier in the Civil war. The following beautiful and touching tribute to mothers of that period is from his pen: 2‘When was there a generation since boys were born that women did not go to war? Never a bayonet lungeo into the breast of a soldier that it had not already cooled its wrath In the heart of a mother. While the soldier has fought through one battle, the mother has wandered over a score of slaughter fields looking for his mangled body. He sings amßdays the rough game of out-of-doors men in camp for a month and then goes out to fight one little skirmish. But every day and night the mother has walked through a hundred alarms that never were. She has watched on the lonely picketpost. She has passed the sentry seat before his tent- She has prayed beside him while he siept. The throbs of he? heart have been the beads of her rosary. What does a soldier know about war? I went Into the army a light-hearted boy. I had the rollicking time of my life, and I came home an athlete. And my mother —her brown hair silvered with my soldiering, held me in her arms and counted the years of her longing and watching with kisses. When she lifted her dear face, I saw the story of my marches and battles written iff lines of anguish. If a mother should write her story after the war. she would pluck a white hair from her temple and dip

the living stylus into the chalice of her tears, to write the diary of the days on her heart.”