A column from Helen Keller, called “Women and Peace” that she wrote for Home
magazine in February 1930. (Read more of Keller's essays in Byline of Hope from the Advocado Press.)
We are standing on the threshold of
the New Year. The world goes on from
year to year with its burden of suffering and misery that need not be.
Some of us are asking ourselves if
the time has not come for women to put the world-house in order. We are weary of groping among the shadows of
old sins! We want more light, more life,
more love! Above all, we want peace—peace
of mind, peace in the world.
Since the beginning of history women
have dreamed of a day when the Dove of Peace should descend upon the world, and
no one should make them afraid. That day
has always been postponed, defeated, the lovely vision retreating with their
retreat and advancing with their advance.
Always the women, the sweethearts, the young wives and mothers have
looked forward to that day, mocked at by the old, the politicians, the
militarists. The sacred, perfect world of love and harmony has ever seemed like
a spirit without a body; but it has lived on in the hearts of profits, seers
and women, and that which liveth shall take shape and stand forth incarnate,
manifest unto all eyes.
I believe that the idea of peace is
more alive in our hearts today than ever before. We do not need to go to the Scriptures of the
sages of a thousand years to find it. It
is within us. We contain all things—the
past with its hate, cruelty and greed; the future radiant with the hope of a
world where the nations shall be in love with each other, without fear and
without danger; and the present in which to work, and bring strong desire to
renew and reorganize our habits. Ours is
the mission of universal peace, since in us alone is the life of the
generations. Let us, then, resolve,
while we ache with the memory of lovers, husbands and sons dead, that no more
battlefields shall be covered with their young bodies. Peace will not begin until women everywhere
make the idea of peace live in their home talk, their books, their art and
their lives.
She should say not, then, “I am only
one woman, I can do nothing. Men make
war and peace, it is their affair, not ours.”
True, men have been the masters of the world—the autocrats of
statecraft; but, what have they done to put the world-house in order? Have they
not imperiled the human race with their diplomacy?
Let us not be deceived by talk about
war to end war. That is propaganda which
closes the mind and prevents education from opening it to the facts. Violence does not, and never will, yield to
violence. There is a great, vibrant
renaissance coming through women. They
will not continue to tolerate the old hateful things their eyes have opened
upon New Year after New Year.
When women in all lands are fully
awake to their missions, their efforts will ensure the final triumph of
justice. They can do more than any
conference of diplomats to help usher in the dawn of a new era of good-will and
peace and righteousness. When such patriotism is taught in our schools and
churches, there shall arise the warm, throbbing, one-hearted Empire of
Brothers.
