Moreover, the country of which it forms a part is passing through a crisis
which, in its spiritual, moral, social and political aspects, is of
extreme seriousness--a seriousness which to a superficial observer is
liable to be dangerously underestimated.
The steady and alarming deterioration in the standard of morality as
exemplified by the appalling increase of crime, by political corruption in
ever widening and ever higher circles, by the loosening of the sacred ties
of marriage, by the inordinate craving for pleasure and diversion, and by
the marked and progressive slackening of parental control, is no doubt the
most arresting and distressing aspect of the decline that has set in, and
can be clearly perceived, in the fortunes of the entire nation.
Parallel with this, and pervading all departments of life--an evil which
the nation, and indeed all those within the capitalist system, though to a
lesser degree, share with that state and its satellites regarded as the
sworn enemies of that system--is the crass materialism, which lays
excessive and ever-increasing emphasis on material well-being, forgetful
of those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation
can be laid for human society. It is this same cancerous materialism, born
originally in Europe, carried to excess in the North American continent,
contaminating the Asiatic peoples and nations, spreading its ominous
tentacles to the borders of Africa, and now invading its very heart, which
Baha'u'llah in unequivocal and emphatic language denounced in His
Writings, comparing it to a devouring flame and regarding it as the chief
factor in precipitating the dire ordeals and world-shaking crises that
must necessarily involve the burning of cities and the spread of terror
and consternation in the hearts of men. Indeed a foretaste of the
devastation which this consuming fire will wreak upon the world, and with
which it will lay waste the cities of the nations participating in this
tragic world-engulfing contest, has been afforded by the last World War,
marking the second stage in the global havoc which humanity, forgetful of
its God and heedless of the clear warnings uttered by His appointed
Messenger for this day, must, alas, inevitably experience. It is this same
all-pervasive, pernicious materialism against which the voice of the
Center of Baha'u'llah's Covenant was raised, with pathetic persistence,
from platform and pulpit, in His addresses to the heedless multitudes,
which, on the morrow of His fateful visit to both Europe and America,
found themselves suddenly swept into the vortex of a tempest which in its
range and severity was unsurpassed in the world's history.
Collateral with this ominous laxity in morals, and this progressive stress
laid on man's material pursuits and well-being, is the darkening of the
political horizon, as witnessed by the widening of the gulf separating the
protagonists of two antagonistic schools of thought which, however
divergent in their ideologies, are to be commonly condemned by the
upholders of the standard of the Faith of Baha'u'llah for their
materialistic philosophies and their neglect of those spiritual values and
eternal verities on which alone a stable and flourishing civilization can
be ultimately established. The multiplication, the diversity and the
increasing destructive power of armaments to which both sides, in this
world contest, caught in a whirlpool of fear, suspicion and hatred, are
rapidly contributing; the outbreak of two successive bloody conflicts,
entangling still further the American nation in the affairs of a
distracted world, entailing a considerable loss in blood and treasure,
swelling the national budget and progressively depreciating the currency
of the state; the confusion, the vacillation, the suspicions besetting the
European and Asiatic nations in their attitude to the American nation; the
overwhelming accretion of strength to the arch enemy of the system
championed by the American Union in consequence of the re-alignment of the
powers in the Asiatic continent and particularly in the Far East--these
have, moreover, contributed their share, in recent years, to the
deterioration of a situation which, if not remedied, is bound to involve
the American nation in a catastrophe of undreamed-of dimensions and of
untold consequences to the social structure, the standard and conception
of the American people and government.
No less serious is the stress and strain imposed on the fabric of American
society through the fundamental and persistent neglect, by the governed
and governors alike, of the supreme, the inescapable and urgent duty--so
repeatedly and graphically represented and stressed by 'Abdu'l-Baha in His
arraignment of the basic weaknesses in the social fabric of the nation--of
remedying, while there is yet time, through a revolutionary change in the
concept and attitude of the average white American toward his Negro fellow
citizen, a situation which, if allowed to drift, will, in the words of
'Abdu'l-Baha, cause the streets of American cities to run with blood,
aggravating thereby the havoc which the fearful weapons of destruction,
raining from the air, and amassed by a ruthless, a vigilant, a powerful
and inveterate enemy, will wreak upon those same cities.
The American nation, of which the community of the Most Great Name forms
as yet a negligible and infinitesimal part, stands, indeed, from whichever
angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and
tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable, but mostly inevitable
and God-sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging
tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and
upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a
world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity,
will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to
play a preponderating role, as foretold by 'Abdu'l-Baha, in the hoisting
of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in
the establishment of a world federal government on this planet. These same
fiery tribulations will not only firmly weld the American nation to its
sister nations in both hemispheres, but will through their cleansing
effect, purge it thoroughly of the accumulated dross which ingrained
racial prejudice, rampant materialism, widespread ungodliness and moral
laxity have combined, in the course of successive generations, to produce,
and which have prevented her thus far from assuming the role of world
spiritual leadership forecast by 'Abdu'l-Baha's unerring pen--a role which
she is bound to fulfill through travail and sorrow.