Tomorrow and Tomorrow/Chapter III

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CHAPTER III

A World at Peace

“As in other centuries, a world choice is again compelled—and again possible,” says Adolf A. Berle, Jr., in “Natural Selection of Political Forces. “If selection now is made well, our children may enjoy a plateau of kindly peace enduring longer, spiritually more serene, than any history has yet known. Multitudes are in the valley of decision—but in the words of Joe], the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”

The miracle of the rapid growth of a will-to—peace throughout the world is directly concomitant with the development of new and terrifying death-dealing military weapons. War on the ground had always been tragically destructive. But war from the air, on the scale recently attained, is too devastating for humanity to endure.

Each of the two World Wars has left as its most important result the formation of an organization to end war. These organizations have been feeble, but they have been sincere. The latter, known as the United Nations—due to the great and growing dread of war amongst humanity—has been able to win greater allegiance, support, and sincere effort on the part of all the peoples of the world than did its precurser, The League of Nations.

It is a striking fact that the founder of each of these peace organizations was familiar with the writings and message of Bahá’u’lláh, who from as early as 1870 began to summon humanity to the white throne of peace.

In messages to the leading rulers of the world (including the President of the United States) sent from Adrianople and from the prison-fortress of Acre,

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Bahá’u’lláh summoned them in the name of God to call a world conference in which steps should be taken to abolish war and to organize a supemational world government. At the time there was no significant willto-peace in the world. On the contrary the leading nations were employing warfare—minor or major in degree—as a means to national aggrandizement, wealth or empire-building. Warfare had always been so employed in the past.

Therefore the world, in 1870, gave little heed to the proclamations of Bahá’u’lláh. But it overlooked one item which would eventually induce a desperate search for permanent peace. Bahá’u’lláh foretold that the instrumentations of warfare would become so deadly and all-destructive as to eventually compel humanity to desist from war entirely. World events have proved the truth of this prognostication. Sadly enough, it is not idealism which is at last inducing humanity to outlaw war. It is not the moral sense but the fear of race annihilation which—under entirely new and unexpected conditions—forces governments to entertain new and unexpected convictions and plans.

Human nature may not greatly change, as the cynics maintain. But the directives of human activity often change, and never more potently than today. So that now there exists that which did not exist in 1870a universal will to avoid war which is equivalent to a universal will-to-peace.

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A very important factor in bringing about world peace is the linking together of the East and the West. The kind of peace which we envision is not the mere cessation of war, but a close working union and cordial cooperation of the hitherto sundered peoples of the earth. Especially is this true of the Orient and Occident.

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From ancient times when unity was attained only by conquest, Europe and Asia were never amalgamated. Alexander, invading Asia to its very center, was prevented by a premature death from carrying out his grandiose scheme of uniting these two disparate civilizations. He had a great vision of world unity. But even had he lived, could he have brought his dream to success? Probably not, for the time was not yet ripe. Rome, even at the height of her power, was never able to penetrate Asia further than the Near East. Consequently the Graeco—Roman civilization, the greatest unitary civilization the world has yet known, was confined to the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.

Twice China, at rare heights of military power and ambition, advanced her conquering armies westward in a gesture toward Europe, but without success. Ghenghis Khan overran almost all of Asia and Europe but left no permanent unifying influence.

Ultimately Europe—with its rising technology, energy and military power—was to bring Asia under subjection. But this subjection has not brought about unity. Quite the contrary, Asia, passive in her impotence, nurtured deep resentments which gave birth as soon as opportunity was offered to a wave of successful nationalism. Only in this present epoch, therefore. can Asia in true independence and equality take her place in the family of nations and share sincerely in the movement toward world unity. It is a fact of great significance that India and Indonesia now play a part in the United Nations together with other Asiatic nations which had previously maintained or secured independence.

Now for the first time in the history of the planet the stage is set for the actual union, on equal terms, of the East and the West. Bahzi’u’llal1 laid great emphasis on the supreme importance of such a union. Each of these two planetary partners has inestimable treasures to

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confer upon the other. And a true fellowship and effective harmony between them will cause the world's civilization to advance by leaps and bounds.

“The East is in need of material progress and the West is in need of a spiritual ideal,” said ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,* speaking in Paris in 1911. “It would be well for the West to turn to the East for illumination, and to give in exchange its scientific knowledge. There must be this interchange of gifts. The East and the West must unite to give to each other what is lacking. This union will bring about true civilization where the spiritual is expressed and carried out in the material. Receiving thus, the one from the other, the greatest harmony will prevail, all people will be united, a state of great perfection will be attained, there will be an (inn cementing, and this world will become a shining mirror for the reflection of the attributes of God.”

The world longs for peace. But none of its respective nations, not even this country, is prepared to relinquish nationalism to the extent which Bahá’u’lláh pointed out would be necessary in an effective world organization.

Two mandatory considerations are still withheld from fulfillment in the United Nations. The first is the relinquishment of national sovereignty to the point of accepting without right of veto the adjudications of a world court. The second inevitable requirement of stable peace is national disarmament down to the point of internal security only, and the establishment of an international police force.

The world is not yet ready for these two momentous steps. Nor can they be accomplished without due cau

• ‘Abdu'l-Bahzi, son of Bahá’u’lláh, became in 1892 the leader

and expounder of the Bahá’í World Faith.

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tion. The writer heard ‘Abdu’l—Bah{i, in Washington in 1912, make a significant reply to a lady who in her passion for peace asked if we should not set an example by disarming first. He answered that it would not be safe for one country to disarm while others were still armed; this must be a simultaneous procedure.

One may ask, what will ever be able to bring about such a simultaneous procedure? The answer is, events. For events have a miraculous power to change and freshly motivate human action. One need only point to World Wars I and II as examples of this, in impelling the League of Nations and the United Nations. And events in Korea caused the establishment of a token international police-force with a speed that parliamentary deliberation could never have brought about.

Bahá’í’s, the world over, look to unseen events of the future to precipitate actions in fulfillment of Bahá’u’lláh’s New World Order such as humanity at this date of writing is neither ripe for, nor even able intelligently to conceive and plan.

These coming events may not seem, at the time when they occur, to be beneficent. But their impact, however calamitous, will at least have the result of precipitating humanity into a durable peace and world order.

World peace is not merely a matter to be arranged between governments by treaties. It is the concern of every citizen of this one-world home of humanity. This is the point of exercising our free will to avoid that nullification of progress, that race annihilation that threatens us.

If only we had as ardent a zeal for peace propaganda as we exhibit for war propaganda!

It was to this ideal that Bahá’u’lláh exhorted humanity in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The abolition of prejudice of all kinds from each citizen’s consciousness is a cardinal principle of Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching. His words “and by the Will of God the Most

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Great Peace shall come” imply the birth of such a zeal for peace in our social consciousness. For the Will of the Creator can be expressed in human affairs only by the agency of human will.

Loyalties are a tender subject, and a shifting or new orientation is always anticipated with fear and apprehension. It took over thirty years for our thirteen founding colonies to achieve some semblance of unity in the larger loyalty from state to federation. We must not expect, therefore, that the citizens of the various countries of the world can now react any differently or any faster to the momentous project of world federation. The scale is much larger and the relationships much more complex than was the case in the founding of the United States.

How can we be expected to achieve loyalty to humanity as first, and our particular country as second? “Let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh eighty years ago.

This is a larger order. But the will to do so can devise the means. This must be understood: love of humanity first and foremost no more undermines a healthy pride in making our nation the most worthy unit we possibly can in the aggregate of a one—world society than did the principle of federalism undermine the healthy growth of the thirteen states into a nation.

“Ye are all the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.”