A Tablet addressed by 'Abdu'l-Baha to an American believer in 1905
contains a statement that is as illuminating as it is touching. Referring
to His situation following the ascension of Baha'u'llah, 'Abdu'l-Baha
spoke of a letter He had received from America at "a time when an ocean of
trials and tribulations was surging...":
Such was our state when a letter came to us from the American friends.
They had covenanted together, so they wrote, to remain at one in all
things, and ... had pledged themselves to make sacrifices in the pathway
of the love of God, thus to achieve eternal life. At the very moment when
this letter was read, together with the signatures at its close,
'Abdu'l-Baha experienced a joy so vehement that no pen can describe
it....(18)
An appreciation of the circumstances in which the expansion of the Cause
in the West occurred is vital for present-day Baha'is, and for many
reasons. It helps us abstract ourselves from the culture of coarse and
intrusive communication that has become so commonplace in present-day
society as to pass almost unnoticed. It draws to our attention the
gentleness with which the Master chose to introduce to His Western
audiences the concepts of human nature and human society revealed by
Baha'u'llah, concepts revolutionary in their implications and entirely
outside His hearers' experience. It explains the delicacy with which He
used metaphors or relied on historical examples, the frequent indirectness
of His approach, the intimacy He could summon up at will, and the
apparently limitless patience with which He responded to questions, many
of whose assumptions about reality had long since lost whatever validity
they might once have possessed.
Yet another insight that a detached examination of the historical
situation to which the Master addressed Himself in the West helps provide
for our generation is an appreciation of the spiritual greatness of those
who responded to Him. These souls answered His summons in spite, not
because, of the liberal and economically advanced world they knew, a world
they no doubt cherished and valued, and in which they had necessarily to
carry on their daily lives. Their response arose from a level of
consciousness that recognized, even if sometimes only dimly, the desperate
need of the human race for spiritual enlightenment. To remain steadfast in
their commitment to this insight required of these early believers--on
whose sacrifice of self much of the foundation of the present-day Baha'i
communities both in the West and many other lands were laid--that they
resist not only family and social pressures, but also the easy
rationalizations of the world-view in which they had been raised and to
which everything around them insistently exposed them. There was a heroism
about the steadfastness of these early Western Baha'is that is, in its own
way, as affecting as that of their Persian co-religionists who, in these
same years, were facing persecution and death for the Faith they had
embraced.
In the forefront of the Westerners who responded to the Master's summons
were the little groups of intrepid believers whom Shoghi Effendi has
hailed as "God-intoxicated pilgrims" and who had the privilege of visiting
'Abdu'l-Baha in the prison-city of 'Akka, of seeing for themselves the
luminosity of His Person and of hearing from His own lips words that had
the power to transform human life. The effect on these believers has been
expressed by May Maxwell:
"Of that first meeting," ... "I can remember neither joy nor pain, nor
anything that I can name. I had been carried suddenly to too great a
height, my soul had come in contact with the Divine Spirit, and this
force, so pure, so holy, so mighty, had overwhelmed me...."(19)
Their return to their homes became, Shoghi Effendi explains, "the signal
for an outburst of systematic and sustained activity, which ... spread its
ramifications over Western Europe and the states and provinces of the
North American continent...."(20) Fuelling their endeavours and those of
their fellow believers, and drawing into the Cause growing numbers of new
adherents, was a flood of Tablets addressed by the Master to recipients on
both sides of the Atlantic, messages that threw open the imagination to
the concepts, principles and ideals of God's new Revelation. The power of
this creative force can be felt in the words with which the first American
believer, Thornton Chase, sought to describe what he was seeing:
His [the Master's] own writings, spreading like white-winged doves from
the Center of His Presence to the ends of the earth, are so many (hundreds
pouring forth daily) that it is an impossibility for him to have given
time to them for searching thought or to have applied the mental processes
of the scholar to them. They flow like streams from a gushing
fountain....(21)
These sentiments add their own perspective to the determination with which
the Master arose to undertake a venture so ambitious as to dismay many of
those immediately around Him. Setting aside concerns expressed about His
advanced age, His ill health, and the physical disabilities left by
decades of imprisonment, He set out on a series of journeys that would
last some three years, carrying Him eventually to the Pacific coast of the
North American continent. The stresses and risks of international travel
in the early years of the century were the least of the obstacles to the
realization of the objectives He had set Himself. In the words of Shoghi
Effendi:
He Who, in His own words, had entered prison as a youth and left it an old
man, Who never in His life had faced a public audience, had attended no
school, had never moved in Western circles, and was unfamiliar with
Western customs and language, had arisen not only to proclaim from pulpit
and platform, in some of the chief capitals of Europe and in the leading
cities of the North American continent, the distinctive verities enshrined
in His Father's Faith, but to demonstrate as well the Divine origin of the
Prophets gone before Him, and to disclose the nature of the tie binding
them to that Faith.(22)
* * * * *
No more brilliant a stage for the opening act of this great drama could
have been desired than London, capital city of the largest and most
cosmopolitan empire the world has ever known. In the eyes of the little
groups of believers who had made the practical arrangements and who longed
for the sight of His face, the trip was a triumph far surpassing their
brightest hopes. Public officials, scholars, writers, editors,
industrialists, leaders of reform movements, members of the British
aristocracy, and influential clergymen of many denominations eagerly
sought Him out, invited Him to their platforms, classrooms, homes and
pulpits, and showered appreciation on the views He expounded. On Sunday,
10 September 1911, the Master spoke for the first time to a public
audience anywhere, from the pulpit of the City Temple. His words evoked
for His hearers the vision of a new age in the evolution of civilization:
This is a new cycle of human power. All the horizons of the world are
luminous, and the world will become indeed as a garden and a paradise....
You are loosed from ancient superstitions which have kept men ignorant,
destroying the foundation of true humanity.
The gift of God to this enlightened age is the knowledge of the oneness of
mankind and of the fundamental oneness of religion. War shall cease
between nations, and by the will of God the Most Great Peace shall come;
the world will be seen as a new world, and all men will live as
brothers.(23)
After an additional two months' stay in Paris and a return to Alexandria
for a winter sojourn and the recuperation of His health, 'Abdu'l-Baha
sailed on 25 March 1912 to New York City, arriving on 11 April of that
year. At even the simplest physical level, a programme packed with
hundreds of public addresses, conferences and private talks in over forty
cities across North America and an additional nineteen in Europe, some of
them visited more than once, was a feat that may well have no parallel in
modern history. On both continents, but especially in North America,
'Abdu'l-Baha received a highly appreciative welcome from distinguished
audiences devoted to such concerns as peace, women's rights, racial
equality, social reform and moral development. On an almost daily basis,
His talks and interviews received wide coverage in mass-circulation
newspapers. He Himself was later to write that He had "observed all the
doors open ... and the ideal power of the Kingdom of God removing every
obstacle and obstruction."(24)
The openness with which He was met permitted 'Abdu'l-Baha to proclaim
unambiguously the social principles of the new Revelation. Shoghi Effendi
has summed up the truths thus presented:
The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or
tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and
fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of all religions; the
condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class
or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and science;
the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of human
kind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education; the
adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes
of wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the
adjudication of disputes between nations; the exaltation of work,
performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the
glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of
religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and
the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal
of all mankind--these stand out as the essential elements of that Divine
polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as well as to the
masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys.(25)
At the heart of the Master's message was the announcement that the
long-promised Day for the unification of humanity and the establishment on
earth of the Kingdom of God had come. That Kingdom, as unveiled in
'Abdu'l-Baha's letters and talks, owed nothing whatever to the
other-worldly assumptions familiar from the teachings of traditional
religion. Rather, the Master proclaimed the coming of age of humankind and
the emergence of a global civilization in which the development of the
whole range of human potentialities will be the fruit of the interaction
between universal spiritual values, on the one hand, and, on the other,
material advances that were even then still undreamed of.
The means to achieve the goal, He said, had already come into existence.
What was needed was the will to act and the faith to persist:
All of us know that international peace is good, that it is the cause of
life, but volition and action are necessary. Inasmuch as this century is
the century of light, capacity for achieving peace has been assured. It is
certain that these ideas will be spread among men to such a degree that
they will result in action.(26)
Although expressed with unfailing courtesy and consideration, the
principles of the new Revelation were set out uncompromisingly in both
private and public encounters. Invariably, the Master's actions were as
eloquent as the words He used. In the United States, for example, nothing
could have more clearly communicated Baha'i belief in the oneness of
religion than 'Abdu'l-Baha's readiness to include references to the
Prophet Muhammad in addresses to Christian audiences and His energetic
vindication of the divine origin of both Christianity and Islam to the
congregation at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. His ability to inspire
in women of all ages confidence that they possessed spiritual and
intellectual capacities fully equal to those of men, His unprovocative but
clear demonstration of the meaning of Baha'u'llah's teachings on racial
oneness by welcoming black as well as white guests at His own dinner table
and the tables of His prominent hostesses, and His insistence on the
overriding importance of unity in all aspects of Baha'i endeavour--such
demonstrations of the way in which the spiritual and practical aspects of
life must interact threw open for the believers windows on a new world of
possibilities. The spirit of unconditional love in which these challenges
were phrased succeeded in overcoming the fears and uncertainties of those
whom the Master addressed.
Greater yet than the effort expended on His public exposition of the Cause
was the time and energy the Master devoted to deepening the believers'
understanding of the spiritual truths of Baha'u'llah's Revelation. In city
after city, from early morning to late at night, the hours that were not
taken up by the public demands of His mission were given over to
responding to the questions of the friends, meeting their needs, and
infusing into them a spirit of confidence in the contributions each could
make to the promotion of the Cause they had embraced. His visit to Chicago
provided the opportunity for 'Abdu'l-Baha to lay, with His own hands, the
cornerstone of the first Baha'i House of Worship in the West, a project
inspired by the one already under way in 'I_sh_qabad and likewise
encouraged from the moment of its conception by 'Abdu'l-Baha.
The Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar is one of the most vital institutions in the
world, and it hath many subsidiary branches. Although it is a House of
Worship, it is also connected with a hospital, a drug dispensary, a
traveler's hospice, a school for orphans, and a university for advanced
studies.... My hope is that the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar will now be
established in America, and that gradually the hospital, the school, the
university, the dispensary and the hospice, all functioning according to
the most efficient and orderly procedures, will follow.(27)
As with the process simultaneously unfolding in Persia, only future
historians will be able to appreciate adequately the creative power of
this dimension of the Western trips. Memoirs and letters have testified to
the way in which even brief encounters with the Master were to sustain
countless Western Baha'is through the years of effort and sacrifice that
followed, as they struggled to expand and consolidate the Faith. Without
such an intervention by the Centre of the Covenant Himself, it is
impossible to imagine little groups of Western believers--lacking entirely
the spiritual heritage that their Persian co-religionists derived from the
long involvement of parents and grandparents in the heroic events of Babi
and early Baha'i history--being able so quickly to grasp what the Cause
required of them and to undertake the daunting tasks involved.
His hearers were summoned to become the loving and confident agents of a
great civilizing process, whose pivot is recognition of the oneness of the
human race. In arising to undertake their mission, He promised that they
would find unlocked in both themselves and others entirely new capacities
with which God has in this Day endowed the human race:
Ye must become the very soul of the world, the living spirit in the body
of the children of men. In this wondrous Age, at this time when the
Ancient Beauty, the Most Great Name, bearing unnumbered gifts, hath risen
above the horizon of the world, the Word of God hath infused such awesome
power into the inmost essence of humankind that He hath stripped men's
human qualities of all effect, and hath, with His all-conquering might,
unified the peoples in a vast sea of oneness.(28)
Nothing perhaps testifies so strikingly to the response the believers made
to this appeal than the fact that the unity established among them did not
inhibit their vivid individual ways of expressing the truths of the Faith.
The relationship between the individual and the community has always been
one of the most challenging issues in the development of society. One has
only to read, even cursorily, accounts of the lives of the early Baha'is
in the West to become aware of the high degree of individuality that
characterized many of them, particularly the most active and creative. Not
infrequently, they had found the Faith only after intensive investigation
of various spiritual and social movements current at the time, and this
broad understanding of the concerns and interests of their contemporaries
no doubt helped make them such effective teachers of the Faith. It is
equally clear, however, that the wide range of expression and
understanding among them did not prevent them or their fellow believers
from contributing to building a collective unity that was the chief
attraction of the Cause. As the memoirs and historical accounts of the
period make clear, the secret of this balancing of individual and
community was the spiritual bond connecting all believers to the words and
example of the Master. In an important sense 'Abdu'l-Baha _was_, for all
of them, the Baha'i Cause.
No objective review of 'Abdu'l-Baha's mission to the West can fail to take
into account the sobering fact that only a small number of those who had
accepted the Faith--and infinitely fewer among the public audiences who had
thronged to hear His words--derived from these priceless opportunities more
than a relatively dim understanding of the implications of His message.
Appreciating these limitations on the part of His hearers, 'Abdu'l-Baha
did not hesitate to introduce into His relations with Western believers
actions that summoned them to a level of consciousness far above mere
social liberalism and tolerance. One example that must stand for a range
of such interventions was His gentle but dramatic act in encouraging the
marriage of Louis Gregory and Louise Mathew--the one black, the other
white. The initiative set a standard for the American Baha'i community as
to the real meaning of racial integration, however timid and slow its
members were in responding to the core implications of the challenge.
Even without a deep understanding of the Master's goals, those who
embraced His message set out, often at great personal cost, to give
practical expression to the principles He taught. Commitment to the cause
of international peace; the abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty
that were undermining the unity of society; the overcoming of national,
racial and other prejudices; the encouragement of equality in the
education of boys and girls; the need to shake off the shackles of ancient
dogmas that were inhibiting investigation of reality--these principles for
the advancement of civilization had made a powerful impression. What few,
if any, of the Master's hearers grasped--perhaps could have grasped--was the
revolutionary change in the very structure of society and the willing
submission of human nature to Divine Law that, in the final analysis, can
alone produce the necessary changes in attitude and behaviour.
* * * * *
The key to this vision of the coming transformation of the individual and
social life of humankind was 'Abdu'l-Baha's proclamation, shortly after
His arrival in North America, of Baha'u'llah's Covenant and of the central
part He Himself had been called on to play in it. In the Master's own
words:
As to the most great characteristic of the revelation of Baha'u'llah, a
specific teaching not given by any of the Prophets of the past: It is the
ordination and appointment of the Center of the Covenant. By this
appointment and provision He has safeguarded and protected the religion of
God against differences and schisms, making it impossible for anyone to
create a new sect or faction of belief.(29)
Choosing New York City for His purpose--and designating it "the City of the
Covenant"--'Abdu'l-Baha unveiled for Western believers the devolution of
authority made by the Founder of their Faith for the definitive
interpretation of His Revelation. A highly regarded believer, Lua
Getsinger, had been called on by the Master to prepare the group of
Baha'is who had gathered in the house where He was temporarily residing
for this historic announcement, following which He Himself went downstairs
and spoke in general terms about some of the implications of the Covenant.
Juliet Thompson, who, with one of the Persian translators, had been in the
upstairs room at the time this mission had been given to her friend, has
left an account of the circumstances. She quotes 'Abdu'l-Baha as saying:
..._I am the Covenant_, appointed by Baha'u'llah. And no one can refute
His Word. This is the Testament of Baha'u'llah. You will find it in the
Holy Book of Aqdas. Go forth and proclaim, "This is _the Covenant of God_
in your midst."(30)
Conceived by Baha'u'llah as the Instrument which, in the words of Shoghi
Effendi, was "to perpetuate the influence of [the] Faith, insure its
integrity, safeguard it from schism, and stimulate its world-wide
expansion,"(31) the Covenant had been violated by members of Baha'u'llah's
own family almost immediately after His ascension. Recognizing that the
authority invested in the Master by the Kitab-i-'Ahd, the Tablet of the
Branch and related documents frustrated their private hopes to turn the
Cause to their personal advantage, these persons began a persistent
campaign to undermine His position, first in the Holy Land and then in
Persia, where the bulk of the Baha'i community was concentrated. When
these schemes failed, they next sought to manipulate the fears of the
Ottoman government and the avarice of its representatives in Palestine.
This hope too collapsed when the "Young Turk Revolution" overthrew the
regime in Constantinople, hanging some thirty-one of its leading
officials, including several who had been implicated in the plans of the
Covenant-breakers.
In the West, during the early years of the Master's ministry,
representatives sent by Him had already successfully countered the
machinations of Ibrahim _Kh_ayru'llah--ironically, the individual who had
introduced many of the American believers to the Cause--who had aimed at
securing a position of leadership through association with the
Covenant-breakers in the Holy Family. Such experiences had doubtless
prepared the Western believers for the Master's formal proclamation of His
station and for the firmness with which He enjoined on believers avoidance
of any involvement with such agents of division: "Certain weak,
capricious, malicious and ignorant souls ... have striven to efface the
Divine Covenant and Testament, and render the clear water muddy so that in
it they might fish.(32) It would be only gradually, however, as the new
communities struggled to overcome differences of opinion and resist the
perennial human temptation to factionalism, that the implications of this
great organizing law of the new Dispensation would emerge.
While laying out in both public addresses and private discussions the
vision of a world of unity and peace that the Revelation of God for our
day will bring into being, the Master warned emphatically of the dangers
that lay on the immediate horizon--both for the Faith and for the world.
For both, 'Abdu'l-Baha foresaw, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, a "winter
of unprecedented severity".
For the Cause of God, that winter would entail heartbreaking betrayals of
the Covenant. In North America, the inconstancy of a small number of
individuals, frustrated in their aspirations for personal leadership,
remained an ongoing source of difficulty for the community, undermining
the faith of some and causing others simply to drift away from
participation in the Faith. In Persia, too, the faith of the friends was
repeatedly tested by the schemes of ambitious individuals suddenly
awakened to the possibilities for self-aggrandizement they believed they
saw in the successes attending the Master's work in the West. In both
cases, the consequences of such defections were ultimately to deepen the
devotion of the firm believers.
As for humanity in general, 'Abdu'l-Baha warned in ominous terms of the
catastrophe that He saw approaching. While emphasizing the urgency of
efforts at reconciliation that might alleviate in some measure the
suffering of the world's people, He left His hearers in no doubt of the
magnitude of the danger. In one of the major newspapers in Montreal, where
press coverage of the trip was particularly comprehensive, it was
reported:
"All Europe is an armed camp. These warlike preparations will necessarily
culminate in a great war. The very armaments themselves are productive of
war. This great arsenal must go ablaze. There is nothing of the nature of
prophecy about such a view", said 'Abdu'l-Baha; "it is based on reasoning
solely."(33)
On 5 December 1912, the Figure who had been hailed across North America as
"the Apostle of Peace" sailed from New York for Liverpool. After
relatively brief stays in London and other British centres, He visited
several continental cities, again devoting several weeks to Paris, where
He had available the services of Hippolyte Dreyfus, whose written Arabic
and Persian met the Master's requirements. As the recognized cultural
capital of continental Europe, Paris was a focal centre for visitors from
many parts of the world, including the Orient. While the talks delivered
during His two extended visits to the city make frequent reference to the
great social issues discussed elsewhere, they seem particularly
distinguished by an intimate spirituality that must have profoundly
touched the hearts of those privileged to meet Him:
Lift up your hearts above the present and look with eyes of faith into the
future! Today the seed is sown, the grain falls upon the earth, but behold
the day will come when it shall rise a glorious tree and the branches
thereof shall be laden with fruit. Rejoice and be glad that this day has
dawned, try to realize its power, for it is indeed wonderful!(34)
On the morning of 13 June 1913, 'Abdu'l-Baha embarked at Marseilles on the
steamer _S. S. Himalaya, _arriving at Port Said in Egypt four days later.
What Shoghi Effendi has called "His historic journeys" ended with His
return to Haifa on 5 December 1913.
* * * * *
Two years, almost to the day, after 'Abdu'l-Baha's statement to the editor
of the _Montreal Daily Star_, the world that had enjoyed so intoxicating a
sense of self-confidence and whose foundations had appeared impregnable,
collapsed abruptly. The catastrophe is popularly associated with the
murder in Sarajevo of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian
empire, and certainly the train of blunders, reckless threats and mindless
appeals to "honour" that led directly to World War I was ignited by this
relatively minor event. In reality, however, as the Master had pointed
out, preliminary "rumblings" during the entire first decade of the century
should have alerted European leaders to the fragility of the existing
order.
In the years 1904-1905, the Japanese and Russian empires had gone to war
with a violence that led to the destruction of virtually the entire naval
forces of the latter power and its surrender of territories it regarded as
vital to its interests, a humiliation that was to have long-lasting
domestic and international repercussions. On two occasions during these
opening years of the century, war between France and Germany over
imperialist designs in North Africa was narrowly averted only through the
self-interested intervention of other powers. In 1911 Italian ambitions
similarly provoked a dangerous threat to international peace by the
seizure from the Ottoman empire of what is now Libya. International
instability had been further deepened-- as the Master had also warned--when
Germany, feeling constrained by a growing web of hostile alliances,
embarked on a massive naval building programme aimed at eliminating the
previously accepted British lead.
Exacerbating these conflicts were tensions among the subject peoples of
the Romanov, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Waiting only for some turn of
events that would break the grip of the ramshackle systems that suppressed
them, Balts, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgars, Romanians,
Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and a host of other nationalities looked forward
eagerly to their day of liberation. Tirelessly exploiting this network of
fissures in the existing order were a multitude of conspiracies,
resistance groups and separatist organizations. Inspired by ideologies
ranging from an almost incoherent anarchism at one extreme to sharply
honed racist and nationalist obsessions at the other, these underground
forces shared one naive conviction: if the particular part of the
prevailing order that had become their target could somehow be brought
down, the inherent nobility of the segment of humankind that supported
their aims--or the assumed nobility of humankind in general--would by itself
ensure a new era of freedom and justice.
Alone among these would-be agents of violent change one broadly based
movement was proceeding systematically and with ruthless clarity of
purpose towards the goal of world revolution. The Communist Party,
deriving both its intellectual thrust and an unshakeable confidence in its
ultimate triumph from the writings of the nineteenth century ideologue
Karl Marx, had succeeded in establishing groups of committed supporters
throughout Europe and various other countries. Convinced that the genius
of its master had demonstrated beyond question the essentially material
nature of the forces that had given rise to both human consciousness and
social organization, the Communist movement dismissed the validity of both
religion and "bourgeois" moral standards. In its view, faith in God was a
neurotic weakness indulged in by the human race, a weakness that had
merely permitted successive ruling classes to manipulate superstition as
an instrument for enslaving the masses.
To the leaders of the world, blindly edging their way towards the
universal conflagration which pride and folly had prepared, the great
strides being made by science and technology represented chiefly a means
of gaining military advantage over their rivals. The European opponents of
the nations concerned, however, were not the poverty-stricken and largely
uneducated colonial populations whom they had been able to subject. The
false confidence that military hardware thus inspired led inexorably to a
race to equip armies and navies with the most advanced of modern weaponry,
and to do so on as massive a scale as possible. Machine guns, long-range
cannon, "dreadnoughts", submarines, landmines, poison gas and the
possibility of equipping airplanes for bombing attacks emerged as features
of what one commentator has termed the "technology of death".(35) All of
these instruments of annihilation would, as 'Abdu'l-Baha had warned, be
deployed and refined during the course of the coming conflict.
Science and technology were also exerting other, more subtle pressures on
the prevailing order. Large-scale industrial production, fuelled by the
arms race, had accelerated the movement of populations into urban centres.
By the end of the preceding century, this process was already undermining
inherited standards and loyalties, exposing growing numbers of people to
novel ideas for the bringing about of social change, and exciting mass
appetites for material benefits previously available only to elite
segments of society. Even under relatively autocratic systems, the public
was beginning to perceive the extent to which civil authority was
dependent for its effectiveness on its ability to win broad popular
support. These social developments would have unforeseen and far-reaching
consequences. As war would drag endlessly on and unthinking faith in its
simplicities come into question, millions of men in conscript armies on
both sides would begin to see their sufferings as meaningless in
themselves and fruitless in terms of their own and their families'
well-being.
Beyond these implications of technological and economic change, scientific
advancement seemed to encourage easy assumptions about human nature, the
almost unnoticed overlay that Baha'u'llah has termed "the obscuring dust
of all acquired knowledge".(36) These unexamined views communicated
themselves to ever-widening audiences. Sensationalism in the popular
press, fiery debates between scientists or scholars, on the one hand, and
theologians or influential clergymen, on the other, along with the rapid
spread of public education, continued to undermine the authority of
accepted religious doctrines, as well as of prevailing moral standards.
These seismic forces of the new century combined to make the situation
facing the Western world in 1914 intensely volatile. When the great
conflagration did break out, therefore, the nightmare far surpassed the
worst fears of thoughtful minds. It would serve no purpose here to review
the exhaustively analyzed cataclysm of World War I. The statistics
themselves remain almost beyond the ability of the human mind to
encompass: an estimated sixty million men eventually being thrown into the
most horrific inferno that history had ever known, eight million of them
perishing in the course of the war and an additional ten million or more
being permanently disabled by crippling injuries, burned-out lungs and
appalling disfigurements.(37) Historians have suggested that the total
financial cost may have reached thirty billion dollars, wiping out a
substantial portion of the total capital wealth of Europe.
Even such massive losses do not begin to suggest the full scope of the
ruin. One of the considerations that long held back President Woodrow
Wilson from proposing to the United States Congress the declaration of war
that had by then become virtually inescapable was his awareness of the
moral damage that would ensue. Not the least of the distinctions that
characterized this extraordinary man--a statesman whose vision both
'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi have praised--was his understanding of the
brutalization of human nature that would be the worst legacy of the
tragedy that was by then engulfing Europe, a legacy beyond human capacity
to reverse.(38)
Reflection on the magnitude of the suffering experienced by humankind in
the war's four years--and the resulting setback to the long, painful
process of the civilizing of human nature--lends tragic force to words the
Master had addressed only two or three years earlier to audiences in such
European cities as London, Paris, Vienna, Budapest and Stuttgart, as well
as in North America. Speaking one evening in the home of Mr. and Mrs.
Sutherland Maxwell in Montreal, He had said:
Today the world of humanity is walking in darkness because it is out of
touch with the world of God. That is why we do not see the signs of God in
the hearts of men. The power of the Holy Spirit has no influence. When a
divine spiritual illumination becomes manifest in the world of humanity,
when divine instruction and guidance appear, then enlightenment follows, a
new spirit is realized within, a new power descends, and a new life is
given. It is like the birth from the animal kingdom into the kingdom of
man.... I will pray, and you must pray, likewise, that such heavenly
bounty may be realized; that strife and enmity may be banished, warfare
and bloodshed taken away; that hearts may attain ideal communication and
that all people may drink from the same fountain.(39)
The vindictive peace treaty, imposed by the Allied powers on their
defeated enemies, succeeded only, as both 'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi
have pointed out, in planting the seeds of another, far more terrible
conflict. The ruinous reparations demanded of the vanquished --and the
injustice that required them to accept the full guilt for a war for which
all parties had been, to one degree or another, responsible--were among the
factors that would prepare demoralized peoples in Europe to embrace
totalitarian promises of relief which they might not otherwise have
contemplated.
Ironically, no matter how harsh were the reparations required of the
defeated, the supposed victors awoke to the appalled realization that
their triumph--and the demand for unconditional surrender that had driven
it--had come at an equally crippling price. Staggering war debts ended
forever the economic dominance which these European nations had acquired
through three centuries of imperialist exploitation of the rest of the
planet. The deaths of millions of young men who would have been urgently
needed to meet the challenges of the coming decades was a loss that could
never be recovered. Indeed, Europe itself--which only four brief years
earlier had represented the apparent summit of civilization and world
influence--lost at one stroke this pre-eminence, and began the inexorable
slide during the following decades toward the status of an auxiliary to a
rising new centre of power in North America.
Initially, it seemed that the vision of the future conceived by Woodrow
Wilson would now be realized. In part, this proved to be the case as
subject peoples throughout Europe gained the freedom to work out their own
destinies through the emergence from the ruin of the former empires of a
series of new nation-states. Further, the president's "Fourteen Points"
briefly endowed his public statements with so great a moral authority in
the minds of millions of Europeans that not even the most recalcitrant of
his fellow leaders among the Allied powers could entirely disregard his
wishes. Despite months of wrangling over colonies, borders, and clauses in
the text of the peace treaty, the Versailles settlement eventually
incorporated an attenuated form of the proposed League of Nations, an
institution which it was hoped could adjust future disputes between
nations and harmonize international affairs.
Shoghi Effendi's commentary on the significance of this historic
initiative commands reflection on the part of every Baha'i who seeks to
understand the events of this turbulent century. Describing two closely
interrelated developments that are associated with the dawn of world
peace, he lays emphasis on the fact that they are "destined to culminate,
in the fullness of time, in a single glorious consummation".(40) The
first, the Guardian describes as associated with the mission of the Baha'i
community in the North American continent; the second, with the destiny of
the United States as a nation. Speaking of this latter phenomenon, which
dated back to the outbreak of the first world war, Shoghi Effendi writes:
It received its initial impetus through the formulation of President
Wilson's Fourteen Points, closely associating for the first time that
republic with the fortunes of the Old World. It suffered its first setback
through the dissociation of that republic from the newly born League of
Nations which that president had labored to create.... It must, however
long and tortuous the way, lead, through a series of victories and
reverses, to the political unification of the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres, to the emergence of a world government and the establishment
of the Lesser Peace, as foretold by Baha'u'llah and foreshadowed by the
Prophet Isaiah. It must, in the end, culminate in the unfurling of the
banner of the Most Great Peace, in the Golden Age of the Dispensation of
Baha'u'llah.(41)
How tragic, therefore, was the fate of the conception that had inspired
the efforts of the American president. As soon became apparent, the League
had been stillborn. Although it included such features as a legislature, a
judiciary, an executive, and a supporting bureaucracy, it had been denied
the authority vital to the work it was ostensibly intended to perform.
Locked into the nineteenth century's conception of untrammelled national
sovereignty, it could take decisions only with the unanimous assent of the
member states, a requirement largely ruling out effective action.(42) The
hollowness of the system was exposed, as well, by its failure to include
some of the world's most powerful states: Germany had been rejected as a
defeated nation held responsible for the war, Russia was initially denied
entrance because of its Bolshevik regime, and the United States itself
refused--as a result of narrow political partisanship in Congress--either to
join the League or to ratify the treaty. Ironically, even the half-hearted
efforts made to protect ethnic minorities living in the newly created
nation-states proved eventually to be little more than weapons to be used
in Europe's continuing fratricidal conflicts.
In sum, at precisely the moment in human history when an unprecedented
outbreak of violence had undermined the inherited bulwarks of civilized
behaviour, the political leadership of the Western world had emasculated
the one alternative system of international order to which experience of
this catastrophe had given birth and which alone could have alleviated the
far greater suffering that lay ahead. In the prophetic words of
'Abdu'l-Baha: "Peace, Peace ... the lips of potentates and peoples
unceasingly proclaim, whereas the fire of unquenched hatreds still
smoulders in their hearts." "The ills from which the world now suffers,"
He added in 1920, "will multiply; the gloom which envelops it will
deepen.... The vanquished Powers will continue to agitate. They will
resort to every measure that may rekindle the flame of war."(43)
* * * * *
As war's inferno was engulfing the world, 'Abdu'l-Baha turned His
attention to the one great task remaining in His ministry, that of
ensuring the proclamation to the remotest corners of the Earth of the
message which had been neglected--or opposed--in Islamic and Western society
alike. The instrument He devised for this purpose was the Divine Plan laid
out in fourteen great Tablets, four of them addressed to the Baha'i
community of North America and ten subsidiary ones addressed to five
specific segments of that community. Together with Baha'u'llah's Tablet of
Carmel and the Master's Will and Testament, the Tablets of the Divine Plan
were described by Shoghi Effendi as three of the "Charters" of the Cause.
Revealed during the darkest days of the war, in 1916 and 1917, the Divine
Plan summoned the small body of American and Canadian believers to assume
the role of leadership in establishing the Cause of God throughout the
planet. The implications of the trust were awe-inspiring. In the words of
the Master:
The hope which 'Abdu'l-Baha cherishes for you is that the same success
which has attended your efforts in America may crown your endeavors in
other parts of the world, that through you the fame of the Cause of God
may be diffused throughout the East and the West, and the advent of the
Kingdom of the Lord of Hosts be proclaimed in all the five continents of
the globe. The moment this Divine Message is carried forward by the
American believers from the shores of America, and is propagated through
the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australia, and as far
as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself securely
established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion. Then will all the
peoples of the world witness that this community is spiritually illumined
and divinely guided. Then will the whole earth resound with the praises of
its majesty and greatness....(44)
Shoghi Effendi reminds us that this historic mission, described by him as
"the birthright of the North American Baha'i Community",(45) is rooted in
the words of the Twin Manifestations of God to humanity's age of maturity.
It appeared first in the words of the Bab, who called on the "peoples of
the West" to "issue forth from your cities", to "aid God ere the Day when
the Lord of mercy shall come down unto you in the shadow of the
clouds...", and to become "as true brethren in the one and indivisible
religion of God, free from distinction,... so that ye find yourselves
reflected in them, and they in you".(46) In His summons to the "Rulers of
America and the Presidents of the Republics therein", Baha'u'llah Himself
delivered a mandate that has no parallel in any of His other addresses to
world leaders: "Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush
the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your
Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise."(47) It was Baha'u'llah, too, who
enunciated one of the most profound truths about the process by which
civilization has evolved: "In the East the light of His Revelation hath
broken; in the West have appeared the signs of His dominion. Ponder this
in your hearts, O people...."(48)
Although the Divine Plan would, as the Guardian was later to say, "be held
in abeyance" until the system necessary to its execution had been brought
into being, 'Abdu'l-Baha had selected, empowered and mandated a company of
believers who would take the lead in launching the enterprise. His own
life was now swiftly moving to its end, but the three years left to Him
after the conclusion of the world war seemed, in retrospect, to provide a
foretaste of the victories that the Cause itself would know as the century
unfolded. The changed conditions in the Holy Land freed the Master to
pursue His work unhampered and created the conditions in which the
brilliance of His mind and spirit could exercise their influence on
government officials, visiting dignitaries of every kind, and the various
communities making up the population of the Holy Land. The Mandate Power
itself sought to express its appreciation of the unifying effect of His
example and the philanthropic work He did by conferring on Him a
knighthood.(49) More importantly, a renewed flow of pilgrims and of
Tablets to Baha'i communities of both East and West stimulated an
expansion in the teaching work and a deepening of the friends'
understanding of the implications of the Faith's message.
Nothing perhaps illustrated so dramatically the spiritual triumph the
Master had won at the World Centre of the Faith than the events in Haifa
that occurred immediately after His ascension in the early hours of 28
November 1921. The following day a vast concourse of thousands of people,
representing the variegated races and sects of the region, followed the
funeral cortege up the slopes of Mount Carmel in a state of unaffected
grief such as the city had never before witnessed. It was led by
representatives of the British government, members of the diplomatic
community, and the heads of all of the religious bodies in the area,
several of whom participated in the service at the Shrine of the Bab. So
unrestrained and unified an outburst of mourning reflected a sudden
awareness of the loss of a Figure whose example had served as a focal
centre of unity in an angry and divided land. In itself, it served for all
with eyes to see as a compelling vindication of the truth of the oneness
of humankind which the Master had tirelessly proclaimed.