National Geographic Magazine/Volume 31/Number 6/Madonnas of Many Lands

Madonnas of Many Lands

International Film Service	A MADONNA OF SORROW AT HER SON'S GRAVE If the sympathy of the civilized world cannot still the anguish of the moment, the ages to come will venerate such heroic women who taught their sons the highest bravery, the finest courtesy, the loftiest honor—and who gave their all for France.
Der Vereinigten Kunstanst. A.-G.	A MADONNA OF THE MOUNTAINS In the whirlpool of Europe, Switzerland's political neutrality has kept its balance, and peace of a sort exists within the little democracy's borders. But it is a peace strained by the evidences of war and shot through with thoughts of another little state which had no friendly Alps to guard it—only a treaty and the honor of nations. Mother hearts cannot forget that there are no such idyls as this in Belgium today.
	A MADONNA OF SACRIFICE Wordless reverence is the most fitting tribute to the Mothers of Belgium. May her sole remaining treasure, in the liberated and peace-blessed world of the future, live to realize that in the terrible vision of the present his eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Garrigues	A BEDOUIN MOTHER AND CHILD The father of this little nomad may be a warlike bandit with a cloudy notion of property rights and other details of the civilized code; his mother a simple daughter of the desert with a childish curiosity and fondness for gaudy trinkets, but her babe has the divine heritage of mother love as truly as the most fortunate child of our own land.
Eliza R. Scidmore	A MOTHER OF WARRIORS: JAPAN Stoicism is more than a tenet with the Japanese; it is almost a religion, and the mother of these babes, if the hand of death were laid upon them, could with calm fortitude relate her loss to a stranger without the display of grief, for it is a cardinal principle of her politeness that she should never burden another with her woes. But beneath this cross-barred cradle of cloth there beats the universal mother heart—universal in its high hopes for her children's future and in its eager joy at personal sacrifice for their happiness.
A MADONNA OF THE GREAT PLAINS The Indian race, in general, has offered resistance to the American “melting pot,” but Indian metal, after proper contact with civilized customs and industries, has gone into the making of many examples of splendid citizenship.
THE BALANCE OF POWER IN CHINA
Borg Mesch	WARM HEARTS OF THE NORTH The Lapland father may measure his wealth in herds of reindeer, in hides and pelts, but the Lapland mother knows that her bright-eyed, smiling baby and her sturdy two-year-old are the treasures beyond price.
A. B. Lewis	A NEW GUINEA WOMAN AND BABY This device is at a disadvantage when compared with an American cradle, but it is a touching evidence of maternal inventiveness and industry at work for baby's safety even in the South Seas.
Mrs. Charles K. Moser	YOUNG SOMALI MOTHER AND BABE: ADEN A Somali woman is instinct with a sense of protection for the innocence and helplessness of a child.
S. J. Spooner	A PATIENT MEXICAN MOTHER When war for the peace of the world and “for the principles that gave her birth,” is welding the great heart of America into high-purposed unity, she must needs feel a deep pity for the mothers and children of distracted Mexico, and a just indignation that their burden of poverty and distress has been increased by selfish Prussian intrigue.
Hon. Belisario Porras	INDIAN MOTHER AND BABE: PANAMA The Cuna-Cuna, or Tule Indians of the San Blas coast of Panama, are of the purest aboriginal strain. For hundreds of years they have resisted amalgamation, and woe to the Cuna-Cuna belle who looks with favor upon a “foreign” lover. They are an intelligent race and are not savages by any means—even though nose rings are a part of the adornment of all members of the gentler sex, who wear them from the time they begin to walk.
Alexander Graham Bell	MOTHER AND CHILD IN CEYLON ln spite of the white man's improvements, the climate of Ceylon is not merciful to baby dwellers in “the Half-way House of the East”; but the little brown natives are merry and bright-eyed, nevertheless. Life is sweet; although, of course, much sweeter when one has a bit of palm sugar to suck.
Harriet Chalmers Adams	MOTHERHOOD IN THE PHILIPPINES He doesn't know that, after his mother, Uncle Sam is his best friend. Had he belonged to an earlier generation his childhood would have been spent at work in the fields until he was old enough to join father in head-hunting. Under American direction, the future probably holds for him an education and a respectable career as a farmer or as a member of the native police. At present he is just a healthy little Ifugao; mother's back is a warm and comfortable reality—and “Who is Uncle Sam, anyway?”
D. W. Iddings	A HUNGARIAN GYPSY MOTHER AND CHILD—AT HOME Neither the poets who have celebrated the gypsy passion for freedom and the open road, nor the ethnologists who have studied the mysterious origin of the race have offered an explanation of the Romany's lack of that almost universal quality—a love for home.
George R. King
AN ESKIMO FAMILY Tenderness and responsibility in their treatment of children is a virtue of the Eskimo which binds them closer to the brotherhood of civilized peoples than their skill at carving or with the needle.

Source: —. (June 1917), Untitled, The National Geographic Magazine 31(6): 549–564.