ender to ideologies as squalid as they have been empty, the
invention and deployment of monstrous weapons of mass annihilation, the
bankrupting of entire nations and the reduction of masses of human beings
to hopeless poverty, the reckless destruction of the environment of the
planet--such are only the more obvious in a catalogue of horrors unknown to
even the darkest of ages past. Merely to mention them is to call to mind
the Divine warnings expressed in Baha'u'llah's words of a century ago: "O
heedless ones! Though the wonders of My mercy have encompassed all created
things, both visible and invisible, and though the revelations of My grace
and bounty have permeated every atom of the universe, yet the rod with
which I can chastise the wicked is grievous, and the fierceness of Mine
anger against them terrible."(1)

Lest any observer of the Cause be tempted to misunderstand such warnings
as only metaphorical, Shoghi Effendi, drawing some of the historical
implications, wrote in 1941:

A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course,
catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its
ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its
driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its
cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing
day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is
smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive
its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome.
Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind
of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its
foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting
the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its
kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its
light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.(2)

* * * * *

From the point of view of wealth and influence, "the world" of 1900 was
Europe and, by grudging concession, the United States. Throughout the
planet, Western imperialism was pursuing among the populations of other
lands what it regarded as its "civilizing mission". In the words of one
historian, the century's opening decade appeared to be essentially a
continuation of the "long nineteenth century",(3) an era whose boundless
self-sa