expanding later into the
institution of independent and sovereign nations.

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind, as proclaimed by Baha'u'llah,
carries with it no more and no less than a solemn assertion that
attainment to this final stage in this stupendous evolution is not only
necessary but inevitable, that its realization is fast approaching, and
that nothing short of a power that is born of God can succeed in
establishing it.

So marvellous a conception finds its earliest manifestations in the
efforts consciously exerted and the modest beginnings already achieved by
the declared adherents of the Faith of Baha'u'llah who, conscious of the
sublimity of their calling and initiated into the ennobling principles of
His Administration, are forging ahead to establish His Kingdom on this
earth. It has its indirect manifestations in the gradual diffusion of the
spirit of world solidarity which is spontaneously arising out of the
welter of a disorganized society.

It would be stimulating to follow the history of the growth and
development of this lofty conception which must increasingly engage the
attention of the responsible custodians of the destinies of peoples and
nations. To the states and principalities just emerging from the welter of
the great Napoleonic upheaval, whose chief preoccupation was either to
recover their rights to an independent existence or to achieve their
national unity, the conception of world solidarity seemed not only remote
but inconceivable. It was not until the forces of nationalism had
succeeded in overthrowing the foundations of the Holy Alliance that had
sought to curb their rising power, that the possibility of a world order,
transcending in its range the political institutions these nations had
established, came to be seriously entertained. It was not until after the
World War that these exponents of arrogant nationalism came to regard such
an order as the object of a pernicious doctrine tending to sap that
essential loyalty upon which the continued existence of their national
life depended. With a vigor that recalled the energy with which the
members of the Holy Alliance sought to stifle the spirit of a rising
nationalism among the peoples liberated from the Napoleonic yoke, these
champions of an unfettered national sovereignty, in their turn, have
labored and are still laboring to discredit principles upon which their
own salvation must ultimately depend.

The fierce opposition whi