the vitals of a despairing society. It is towards this
goal--the goal of a new World Order, Divine in origin, all-embracing in
scope, equitable in principle, challenging in its features--that a harassed
humanity must strive.

To claim to have grasped all the implications of Baha'u'llah's prodigious
scheme for world-wide human solidarity, or to have fathomed its import,
would be presumptuous on the part of even the declared supporters of His
Faith. To attempt to visualize it in all its possibilities, to estimate
its future benefits, to picture its glory, would be premature at even so
advanced a stage in the evolution of mankind.

All we can reasonably venture to attempt is to strive to obtain a glimpse
of the first streaks of the promised Dawn that must, in the fullness of
time, chase away the gloom that has encircled humanity. All we can do is
to point out, in their broadest outline, to what appear to us to be the
guiding principles underlying the World Order of Baha'u'llah, as amplified
and enunciated by 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Centre of His Covenant with all
mankind and the appointed Interpreter and Expounder of His Word.

That the unrest and suffering afflicting the mass of mankind are in no
small measure the direct consequences of the World War and are
attributable to the unwisdom and short-sightedness of the Framers of the
Peace Treaties only a biased mind can refuse to admit....

It would be idle however to contend that the war, with all the losses it
involved, the passions it aroused and the grievances it left behind, has
solely been responsible for the unprecedented confusion into which almost
every section of the civilized world is plunged at present. Is it not a
fact--and this is the central idea I desire to emphasize--that the
fundamental cause of this world unrest is attributable, not so much to the
consequences of what must sooner or later come to be regarded as a
transitory dislocation in the affairs of a continually changing world, but
rather to the failure of those into whose hands the immediate destinies of
peoples and nations have been committed, to adjust their systems of
economic and political institutions to the imperative needs of a fast
evolving age? Are not these intermittent crises that convulse present-day
society due primarily to the lamentable inability of the world's
recognized leaders to read aright the signs of the times, to rid
themselves once for all of their preconceived ideas and fettering