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-Baha 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."
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.
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.