e world,
and the commandments of the Prince of Peace will so dominate the arteries
and nerves of every people as to draw into His sheltering shade all the
nations on earth. From springs of love and truth and unity will the true
Shepherd give His sheep to drink.

O handmaid of God, peace must first be established among individuals,
until it leadeth in the end to peace among nations. Wherefore, O ye
Baha'is, strive ye with all your might to create, through the power of the
Word of God, genuine love, spiritual communion and durable bonds among
individuals. This is your task.

202: O YE LOVERS OF TRUTH, YE SERVANTS OF HUMANKIND! ...

O ye lovers of truth, ye servants of humankind! Out of the flowering of
your thoughts and hopes, fragrant emanations have come my way, wherefore
an inner sense of obligation compelleth me to pen these words.

Ye observe how the world is divided against itself, how many a land is red
with blood and its very dust is caked with human gore. The fires of
conflict have blazed so high that never in early times, not in the Middle
Ages, not in recent centuries hath there ever been such a hideous war, a
war that is even as millstones, taking for grain the skulls of men. Nay,
even worse, for flourishing countries have been reduced to rubble, cities
have been levelled with the ground, and many a once prosperous village
hath been turned into ruin. Fathers have lost their sons, and sons their
fathers. Mothers have wept away their hearts over dead children. Children
have been orphaned, women left to wander, vagrants without a home. From
every aspect, humankind hath sunken low. Loud are the piercing cries of
fatherless children; loud the mothers' anguished voices, reaching to the
skies.

And the breeding-ground of all these tragedies is prejudice: prejudice of
race and nation, of religion, of political opinion; and the root cause of
prejudice is blind imitation of the past--imitation in religion, in racial
attitudes, in national bias, in politics. So long as this aping of the
past persisteth, just so long will the foundations of the social order be
blown to the four winds, just so long will humanity be continually exposed
to direst peril.

Now, in such an illumined age as ours, when realities previously unknown
to man have been laid bare, and the secrets of created things have been
disclosed, and the Morn of Truth hath broken and lit up the world--is it
admissible that men should be waging a fr