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The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh
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Pages 30-31
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A War-Weary World
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Neither the force which the framers and guarantors of the
Peace Treaties have mustered, nor the lofty ideals which originally
animated the author of the Covenant of the League of Nations,
have proved a sufficient bulwark against the forces of internal disruption
with which a structure so laboriously contrived had been
consistently assailed. Neither the provisions of the so-called Settlement
which the victorious Powers have sought to impose, nor the
machinery of an institution which America's illustrious and far-seeing
President had conceived, have proved, either in conception or
practice, adequate instruments to ensure the integrity of the Order
they had striven to establish. "The ills from which the world now
suffers," wrote `Abdu'l-Bahá in January, 1920, "will multiply; the
gloom which envelops it will deepen. The Balkans will remain discontented.
Its restlessness will increase. The vanquished Powers will
continue to agitate. They will resort to every measure that may
rekindle the flame of war. Movements, newly-born and world-wide
in their range, will exert their utmost effort for the advancement of
their designs. The Movement of the Left will acquire great importance.
Its influence will spread."
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Economic distress, since those words were written, together with
political confusion, financial upheavals, religious restlessness and
racial animosities, seem to have conspired to add immeasurably to
the burdens under which an impoverished, a war-weary world is
groaning. Such has been the cumulative effect of these successive
crises, following one another with such bewildering rapidity, that the
very foundations of society are trembling. The world, to whichever
continent we turn our gaze, to however remote a region our survey
may extend, is everywhere assailed by forces it can neither explain
nor control.
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Europe, hitherto regarded as the cradle of a highly-vaunted civilization,
as the torch-bearer of liberty and the mainspring of the
forces of world industry and commerce, stands bewildered and
paralyzed at the sight of so tremendous an upheaval. Long-cherished
ideals in the political no less than in the economic sphere of human
activity are being severely tested under the pressure of reactionary
forces on one hand and of an insidious and persistent radicalism on
the other. From the heart of Asia distant rumblings, ominous and
insistent, portend the steady onslaught of a creed which, by its
negation of God, His Laws and Principles, threatens to disrupt
the foundations of human society. The clamor of a nascent nationalism,
coupled with a recrudescence of skepticism and unbelief, come
as added misfortunes to a continent hitherto regarded as the symbol
of age-long stability and undisturbed resignation. From darkest
Africa the first stirrings of a conscious and determined revolt against
the aims and methods of political and economic imperialism can
be increasingly discerned, adding their share to the growing vicissitudes
of a troubled age. Not even America, which until very
recently prided itself on its traditional policy of aloofness and the
self-contained character of its economy, the invulnerability of its
institutions and the evidences of its growing prosperity and prestige,
has been able to resist the impelling forces that have swept her into
the vortex of an economic hurricane that now threatens to impair
the basis of her own industrial and economic life. Even far-away
Australia, which, owing to its remoteness from the storm-centers
of Europe, would have been expected to be immune from the trials
and torments of an ailing continent, has been caught in this whirlpool
of passion and strife, impotent to extricate herself from their
ensnaring influence.
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