…in reality God has created man for love's sake. God has
endowed man with creation so that he may illumine the world with the flame of
brotherhood and express the utmost state of unity and accord. This state would
express God's good pleasure; this would be the prosperity of the world of
humanity. A thousand times alas! that this glorious century has been besmeared
with war and strife, hatred and rancour.
Bloodthirsty wolves are tearing the sheep of God. Destruction is more
widespread than in all the ages of the past.
We hear on every side praises of the wonders of this cycle,
its achievements, its refinements, its genius; calling the past the age of
mediaeval horror. What mediaeval age held the horror of a Krupp gun, a Mauser
rifle or a shrapnel shell that kills a whole camp? On the sea we have the
submarine and the dreadnought. If you compare the past with this age, impartial
judgement will call this the age of human fratricide.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a
talk, January 16, 1913, Clifton, England; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 1,
March 21, 1913)
