o
repeatedly and graphically represented and stressed by 'Abdu'l-Baha in His
arraignment of the basic weaknesses in the social fabric of the nation--of
remedying, while there is yet time, through a revolutionary change in the
concept and attitude of the average white American toward his Negro fellow
citizen, a situation which, if allowed to drift, will, in the words of
'Abdu'l-Baha, cause the streets of American cities to run with blood,
aggravating thereby the havoc which the fearful weapons of destruction,
raining from the air, and amassed by a ruthless, a vigilant, a powerful
and inveterate enemy, will wreak upon those same cities.

The American nation, of which the community of the Most Great Name forms
as yet a negligible and infinitesimal part, stands, indeed, from whichever
angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and
tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable, but mostly inevitable
and God-sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging
tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and
upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a
world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity,
will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to
play a preponderating role, as foretold by 'Abdu'l-Baha, in the hoisting
of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in
the establishment of a world federal government on this planet. These same
fiery tribulations will not only firmly weld the American nation to its
sister nations in both hemispheres, but will through their cleansing
effect, purge it thoroughly of the accumulated dross which ingrained
racial prejudice, rampant materialism, widespread ungodliness and moral
laxity have combined, in the course of successive generations, to produce,
and which have prevented her thus far from assuming the role of world
spiritual leadership forecast by 'Abdu'l-Baha's unerring pen--a role which
she is bound to fulfill through travail and sorrow.

AMERICAN BAHA'IS STAND AT CROSSROADS

The American Baha'i Community, the leaven destined to leaven the whole,
cannot hope, at this critical juncture in the fortunes of a struggling,
perilously situated, spiritually moribund nation, to either escape the
trials with which this nation is confronted, nor claim to be wholly immune
from the evils that stain its character.

At so cr