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The Impotence of Statesmanship |
Dearly-beloved friends! Humanity, whether viewed in the light
of man’s individual conduct or in the existing relationships between
organized communities and nations, has, alas, strayed too far and
suffered too great a decline to be redeemed through the unaided
efforts of the best among its recognized rulers and statesmen—however disinterested their motives, however concerted their action,
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however unsparing in their zeal and devotion to its cause. No scheme
which the calculations of the highest statesmanship may yet devise;
no doctrine which the most distinguished exponents of economic
theory may hope to advance; no principle which the most ardent of
moralists may strive to inculcate, can provide, in the last resort,
adequate foundations upon which the future of a distracted world
can be built. No appeal for mutual tolerance which the worldly-wise
might raise, however compelling and insistent, can calm its passions
or help restore its vigor. Nor would any general scheme of mere
organized international cöoperation, in whatever sphere of human
activity, however ingenious in conception, or extensive in scope,
succeed in removing the root cause of the evil that has so rudely upset
the equilibrium of present-day society. Not even, I venture to assert,
would the very act of devising the machinery required for the
political and economic unification of the world—a principle that has
been increasingly advocated in recent times—provide in itself the
antidote against the poison that is steadily undermining the vigor of
organized peoples and nations. What else, might we not confidently
affirm, but the unreserved acceptance of the Divine Program enunciated,
with such simplicity and force as far back as sixty years ago,
by Bahá’u’lláh, embodying in its essentials God’s divinely appointed
scheme for the unification of mankind in this age, coupled with an
indomitable conviction in the unfailing efficacy of each and all of its
provisions, is eventually capable of withstanding the forces of internal
disintegration which, if unchecked, must needs continue to eat into
the vitals of a despairing society. It is towards this goal—the goal
of a new World Order, Divine in origin, all-embracing in scope,
equitable in principle, challenging in its features—that a harassed
humanity must strive.
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To claim to have grasped all the implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s prodigious
scheme for world-wide human solidarity, or to have fathomed
its import, would be presumptuous on the part of even the declared
supporters of His Faith. To attempt to visualize it in all its possibilities,
to estimate its future benefits, to picture its glory, would be
premature at even so advanced a stage in the evolution of mankind.
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