I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier - Lyrics: Alfred Bryan, Music: Al Piantadosi A popular 1915 anti-war song. The sheet music says on the top: A Mother's Plea for Peace The version you have is sung by Hamish Imlach


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 heard a mother murmur through her tears:

Chorus: I didn't raise my boy to be a 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!

Chorus: I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier...

Copyright MCMXV by Leo, Feist, Inc. Feist Bldg. NYC

--
Joyce