‘Abdu’l-Bahá laughed heartily, and said that the books of
Bahá’u’lláh, written and printed sixty years ago, contained the ideals now so
familiar to the West, but, at that time, they had not been printed or thought
of in the West. Besides, he continued, supposing that a very advanced thinker
from the West had gone to visit Bahá’u’lláh and to teach Him, would the name of
such a great man and the fact of his visit have been unknown and unrecorded?
No! In former days, in the time of the Buddha and Zoroaster, civilization in
Asia and in the East was very much higher than in the West and ideas and
thoughts of the Eastern peoples were much in advance of, and nearer to the
thoughts of God than those of the West. But since that time superstitions had
crept into the religion and ideals of the East, and from many differing causes
the ideals and characters of the Eastern peoples had gone down and down, lower
and lower, while the Western peoples had been constantly advancing and
struggling towards the Light. Consequently, in these days, the civilization of
the West was much higher than that of the East, and the ideas and thoughts of the
people of the West were much nearer to the thought of God than those of the
East. Therefore, the ideals of Bahá’u’lláh had been more quickly realized in
the West.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá showed further how Bahá’u’lláh had exactly
described in one of his books what has since been carried out in the
International Council of Arbitration, describing its various functions, some of
which have not yet been realized and he (‘Abdu’l-Bahá) would describe them to
us now, so that when they were fulfilled, as they would be in the near future,
we might know that they had been prophesied by Bahá’u’lláh.
War was the greatest calamity that could overtake the
nations, because the people usually employed in agriculture, trades, commerce,
and other useful arts, were taken away from their various occupations and
turned into soldiers, so that there was great waste and loss, in addition to
the destruction and carnage of war.
Bahá’u’lláh had said that the functions of the International
Court would be to settle disputes that arose from time to time between the
nations; to define the exact boundaries of the different countries, and to
decide what number of soldiers and guns should be maintained by each nation,
according to its population, in order to preserve internal order. For instance,
one country might have ten thousand soldiers, another twenty thousand, another
fifteen thousand, and so on, in accordance with the size and population of the
nation; also if any people rebelled against the decision of the Court and
rejected it, the Court would empower the others to join their forces and to
endorse their decision, if need be, by united action.
We had not seen any of these things actualized as yet, but
we should do so in the future.
(‘Notes of conversations; ‘Abdu’l-Baha in
London’)
