Tuesday, October 30, 2012

I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier - The first anti-war hit record


Released in 1915, I Didn't Raise My Son to be a Soldier, sung here by the Peerless Quartet, was the first commercially successful anti-war record and featured prominently in the American anti-war movement opposing US entry in the first world war. The warmongering ex-president Theodore Roosevelt objected to the song's message of peace and its early feminism: "Foolish people who applaud a song entitled 'I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier' are just the people who would also in their hearts applaud a song entitled 'I Didn't Raise my Girl To Be A Mother."

3 comments:

  1. If I was Theodore Roosevelt's father I would have shot myself for having such an embarrassment for a son. He is a disgusting stain on American history like many of our presidents. Yuck!

    But great song!

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  2. No matter how we raise them, they make their own choices usually with the "help" of uncle sam, hollywood, girlfriends, roommates. If they live to be 50 they might look back and understand what mama said.

    Any young man that feels embarrassed or slighted by his job at the local fast food joint or some such remember this: You are not murdering or securing stolen land or other resources like opium poppies on another continent, you have not sold your soul to dark forces, you are alive, you have an impact on your world where you are standing, and their is one person that loves you in a manner that no one else can or will ever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roosevelt was a war mongering lunatic. Mark Twain said as much.

    ReplyDelete

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