This nation so signally blest, occupying so eminent and responsible a
position in a continent so wonderfully endowed, was the first among the
nations of the West to be warmed and illuminated by the rays of the
Revelation of Baha'u'llah, soon after the proclamation of His Covenant on
the morrow of His ascension. This nation, moreover, may well claim to
have, as a result of its effective participation in both the first and
second world wars, redressed the balance, saved mankind the horrors of
devastation and bloodshed involved in the prolongation of hostilities, and
decisively contributed, in the course of the latter conflict, to the
overthrow of the exponents of ideologies fundamentally at variance with
the universal tenets of our Faith.
To her President, the immortal Woodrow Wilson, must be ascribed the unique
honor, among the statesmen of any nation, whether of the East or of the
West, of having voiced sentiments so akin to the principles animating the
Cause of Baha'u'llah, and of having more than any other world leader,
contributed to the creation of the League of Nations--achievements which
the pen of the Center of God's Covenant acclaimed as signalizing the dawn
of the Most Great Peace, whose sun, according to that same pen, must needs
arise as the direct consequence of the enforcement of the laws of the
Dispensation of Baha'u'llah.
To the matchless position achieved by so preeminent a president of the
American Union, in a former period, at so critical a juncture in
international affairs, must now be added the splendid initiative taken, in
recent years by the American government, culminating in the birth of the
successor of that League in San Francisco, and the establishment of its
permanent seat in the city of New York. Nor can the preponderating
influence exerted by this nation in the councils of the world, the
prodigious economic and political power that it wields, the prestige it
enjoys, the wealth of which it disposes, the idealism that animates its
people, her magnificent contribution, as a result of her unparalleled
productive power, for the relief of human suffering and the rehabilitation
of peoples and nations, be overlooked in a survey of the position which
she holds, and which distinguishes her from her sister nations in both the
new and old worlds.