Anti-War

The song “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier,” was written in 1916 and it is about mothers who are against the war.  The song is about a mother wants her son to live a good long life and not have to put on a service uniform to risk his life.  The woman did not believe that war was just and it is not right for her son to go off to shoot at another mother’s son. She believes that war should be made with a pen between leaders not by the sons of all of the mothers who have to deal with the thought of losing their son in battle.  There is also a poster that goes along with this song. It is a picture of a mother embracing her son while she is thinking of the horrors of the war.

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother’s hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thro’ her tears:

CHORUS (sung twice after each verse)
“I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,
There’d be no war today,
If mother’s all would say,
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.”
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
What victory can cheer a mother’s heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back All she cared to call her own.
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
“Remember that my boy belongs to me!”

(CHORUS)