A Plea for Mercy (1914)

AUTHOR: Lovell, Mary Frances

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this short anti-war article (in the context of World War I), Lovell promotes humane education as a means to achieve perpetual peace. She notes the gendered nature of war and violence, with men the perpetrators and women and children their victims. Animals, too, suffer: “It is men who make war and who are eager for it; its unspeakably wretched victims are women, innocent, helpless children, and unfortunate dumb animals” (10). However, war is not inevitable because humans are divinely endowed with free will. Humans can choose to end these atrocities definitively: “it is for those who choose the right, to impart it to others and by their work and prayers to 'haste the coming of the day of God'” (10). This is the task of humane education. Lovell calls for the United States to become the world's “exemplar of all beneficence, and of the actual practice of the Golden Rule through the education of every child in every school in the land under laws prescribing definite humane teaching” (10). Doing so would be an act of “true patriotism” (10).