Born on July 5, 1857 - 161 years
ago this month. Clara Zetkin was a
German Marxist theorist, activist and
organizer of the first International
Women's Day in 1911.
The following is an excerpt from,
"The Duty of Working Women in
War-Time" which was published
November 19, 1914 as she
organized against the First World
War from within Germany.
"We Socialist women hear the
voices which in this time of
blood and iron still speak softly,
painfully, and yet consolingly,
of the future. Let us be their
interpreters to our children.
Let us preserve them from the
harsh brazen sound of the ideas
which fill the streets to-day, in
which cheap pride-of-race stifles
humanity. In our children must
grow up the security that this
most frightful of all wars shall
be the last. The blood of the
killed and wounded must not
be a stream to divide that which
unites the present distress and
the future hope. It must be as a
cement which shall bind fast for
all time."
