ited assumptions,
institutions and priorities that had been progressively undermined by
forces at work during the first half of the century were now crumbling. If
the change could not yet be described as an emerging conviction about the
oneness of humankind, no objective observer could mistake the fact that
barriers blocking such a realization, which had survived all the assaults
against them earlier in the century, were at last giving way. One's mind
turns to the prophetic words of the Qur'an: "And you see the mountains and
think them solid, but they shall pass away as the passing away of the
clouds." (27:88) The effect was to inspire in progressive minds a sense of
confidence that it would be possible to construct a new kind of society
that would not only preserve the long-term peace of the world, but enrich
the lives of all of its inhabitants.

Primarily, this new birth of hope had resulted, as Shoghi Effendi had
foreseen, from the "fiery ordeal" that had at last succeeded in
"implanting that sense of responsibility" which leaders earlier in the
century had sought to avoid.(89) To this new awareness had been added the
effects of the fear induced by the invention and use of atomic weapons, a
reaction calling to mind for Baha'is the Master's prescient statements in
North America that ultimately peace would come because the nations would
be driven to accept it. The _Montreal Daily Star_ had quoted Him as
saying: "It [peace] will be universal in the twentieth century. All
nations will be forced into it."(90) The years immediately following 1945
witnessed advances in framing a new social order that went far beyond the
brightest hopes of earlier decades.

Most important of all was the willingness of national governments to
create a new system of international order, and to endow it with the
peacekeeping authority so tragically denied to the defunct League. Meeting
in San Francisco in April 1945--in the state where 'Abdu'l-Baha had
prophetically declared, "May the first flag of international peace be
upraised in this state"--delegates of fifty nations adopted the Charter of
the United Nations Organization, the name proposed for it by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.(91) Ratification by the required number of member
nations followed that October, and the first General Assembly of the new
organization convened on 10 January 1946, in London. In October 1949, the
cornerstone of the United Nations' permanent seat was laid in New