The rise of Bolshevism, born amidst the fires of that inconclusive
struggle, shook the throne of the Czars and overthrew it. Alexander II
Nicolaevich, whom Baha'u'llah had commanded in His Tablet to "arise ...
and summon the nations unto God," who had been thrice warned: "beware lest
thy desire deter thee from turning towards the face of thy Lord," "beware
lest thou barter away this sublime station," "beware lest thy sovereignty
withhold thee from Him Who is the Supreme Sovereign," was not indeed the
last of the Czars to rule his country, but rather the inaugurator of a
retrogressive policy which in the end proved fatal to both himself and his
dynasty.
In the latter part of his reign he initiated a reactionary policy which,
causing widespread disillusionment, gave rise to Nihilism, which, as it
spread, ushered in a period of terrorism of unexampled violence, leading
in its turn to several attempts on his life, and culminating in his
assassination. Stern repression guided the policy of his successor,
Alexander III, who "assumed an attitude of defiant hostility to innovators
and liberals." The tradition of unqualified absolutism, of extreme
religious orthodoxy was maintained by the still more severe Nicolas II,
the last of the Czars, who, guided by the counsels of a man who was "the
very incarnation of a narrow-minded, stiff-necked despotism," and aided by
a corrupt bureaucracy, and humiliated by the disastrous effects of a
foreign war, increased the general discontent of the masses, both
intellectuals and peasants. Driven for a time into subterranean channels,
and intensified by military reverses, it exploded at last in the midst of
the Great War, in the form of a Revolution which, in the principles it
challenged, the institutions it subverted, and the havoc it wrought, has
scarcely a parallel in modern history.
A great trembling seized and rocked the foundations of that country. The
light of religion was dimmed. Ecclesiastical institutions of every
denomination were swept away. The state religion was disendowed,
persecuted, and abolished. A far-flung empire was dismembered. A militant,
triumphant proletariat exiled the intellectuals, and plundered and
massacred the nobility. Civil war and disease decimated a population,
already in the throes of agony and despair. And, finally, the Chief
Magistrate of a mighty dominion, together with his consort, and his
family, and his dynasty, were swept into the vortex of this great
convulsion, and perished.
The very ordeal that heaped such dire misfortunes on the empire of the
Czars brought about, in its concluding stages, the fall of the almighty
German Kaiser as well as that of the inheritor of the once famed Holy
Roman Empire. It shattered the whole fabric of Imperial Germany, which
arose out of the disaster that engulfed the Napoleonic dynasty, and dealt
the Dual Monarchy its death blow.
Almost half a century before, Baha'u'llah, Who had predicted, in clear and
resounding terms, the ignominious fall of the successor of the great
Napoleon, had, in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, addressed to Kaiser William I, the
newly acclaimed victor, a no less significant warning, and prophesied, in
His apostrophe to the banks of the Rhine, in words equally unambiguous,
the mourning that would afflict the capital of the newly federated empire.
"Do thou remember," Baha'u'llah thus addressed him, "the one [Napoleon]
whose power transcended thy power, and whose station excelled thy
station.... Think deeply, O king, concerning him, and concerning them who,
like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men." And again: "O
banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the
swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another
turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in
conspicuous glory."
On him who, in his old age, sustained two attempts upon his life by the
advocates of the rising tide of socialism; on his son Frederick III, whose
three months' reign was overshadowed by mortal disease; and finally on his
grandson, William II, the self-willed and overweening monarch and wrecker
of his own empire--on these fell, in varying degrees, the full weight of
the responsibilities consequent to these dire pronouncements.
William I, first German Emperor and seventh king of Prussia, whose entire
lifetime had, up to the date of his accession, been spent in the army, was
a militaristic, autocratic ruler, imbued with antiquated ideas, who
initiated, with the aid of a statesman rightly regarded as "one of the
geniuses of his century," a policy which may be said to have inaugurated a
new era not only for Prussia but for the world. This policy was pursued
with characteristic thoroughness and perfected through the repressive
measures that were taken to safeguard and uphold it, through the wars that
were waged for its realization, and the political combinations that were
subsequently formed to exalt and consolidate it, combinations that were
fraught with such dreadful consequences to the European continent.
William II, temperamentally dictatorial, politically inexperienced,
militarily aggressive, religiously insincere, posed as the apostle of
European peace, yet actually insisted on "the mailed fist" and "the
shining armor." Irresponsible, indiscreet, inordinately ambitious, his
first act was to dismiss that sagacious statesman, the true founder of his
empire, to whose sagacity Baha'u'llah had paid tribute, and to the
unwisdom of whose imperial and ungrateful master 'Abdu'l-Baha had
testified. War indeed became a religion of his country, and by enlarging
the scope of his multifarious activities, he proceeded to prepare the way
for that final catastrophe that was to dethrone him and his dynasty. And
when the war broke out, and the might of his armies seemed to have
overpowered his adversaries, and the news of his triumphs was noised
abroad, reverberating as far as Persia, voices were raised ridiculing
those passages of the Kitab-i-Aqdas which so clearly foreshadowed the
misfortunes that were to befall his capital. Suddenly, however, swift and
unforeseen reverses fatally overtook him. Revolution broke out. William
II, deserting his armies, fled ignominiously to Holland, followed by the
Crown Prince. The princes of the German states abdicated. A period of
chaos ensued. The communist flag was hoisted in the capital, which became
a caldron of confusion and civil strife. The Kaiser signed his abdication.
The Constitution of Weimar established the Republic, bringing the
tremendous structure, so elaborately reared through a policy of blood and
iron, crashing to the ground. All the efforts to that end, which through
internal legislation and foreign wars had, ever since the accession of
William I to the Prussian throne, been assiduously exerted, came to
naught. "The lamentations of Berlin," tortured by the terms of a treaty
monstrous in its severity, were raised, contrasting with the hilarious
shouts of victory that rang, half a century before, in the Hall of Mirrors
of the Palace of Versailles.
The Hapsburg monarch, heir of centuries of glorious history,
simultaneously toppled from his throne. It was Francis Joseph, whom
Baha'u'llah chided in the Kitab-i-Aqdas for having failed in his duty to
investigate His Cause, let alone to seek His presence, when so easily
accessible to him in the course of his visit to the Holy Land. "Thou
passed Him by," He thus reproves the pilgrim-emperor, "and inquired not
about Him.... We have been with thee at all times, and found thee clinging
unto the Branch and heedless of the Root.... Open thine eyes, that thou
mayest behold this Glorious Vision and recognize Him Whom thou invokest in
the daytime and in the night season, and gaze on the Light that shineth
above this luminous Horizon."
The House of Hapsburg, in which the Imperial Title had remained
practically hereditary for almost five centuries, was, ever since those
words were uttered, being increasingly menaced by the forces of internal
disintegration, and was sowing the seeds of an external conflict, to both
of which it ultimately succumbed. Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King
of Hungary, a reactionary ruler, reestablished old abuses, ignored the
rights of nationalities, and restored that bureaucratic centralization
that proved in the end so injurious to his empire. Repeated tragedies
darkened his reign. His brother Maximilian was shot in Mexico. The Crown
Prince Rudolph perished in a dishonorable affair. The Empress was
assassinated in Geneva. Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were
murdered in Sarajevo, kindling a war in the midst of which the Emperor
himself died, closing a reign which is unsurpassed by any other reign in
the disasters it brought to the nation.