I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier

When World War I began in 1914, the United States wanted no part of it. Songs like I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier (1915) warned against American mothers losing their children. At the time, the United States pursued a policy of non-intervention, refusing to participate in other nation’s problems. I Didn’t Raise My Boy went one step further by promoting pacifism, suggesting arbitration rather than warfare as a solution to the conflict.

The cover illustration for I Didn’t Raise My Boy dramatizes these views – a white-haired mother clings to her soldier-age son; the safety of home (hearthfire and knitting needles) contrasts with the imagined dangers of the battlefield (gunfire and bayonets). Composer Al Piantadosi (1884-1955) quotes 18^th-century Irish composer Thomas Moore’s song The Minstrel Boy, about a songster-turned-soldier who dies in battle. The Minstrel Boy had been popular during the American Civil War.