The Danish Peace Academy
Songbook
I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier
(Tekst: Alfred Bryan)
Melodi: Al Piantadosi
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone
Who may never return again,
Ten million mothers' hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years
I hears a mother murmer thro' her tears.
cho: I didn't raise my boy to be 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 mothers all would say:
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
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!
I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier is among the first recordings of a peace song.
The rercording with the Peerless Quartet is from December 1914.