nomic situation was desperate. The defeat of Austria and Hungary, in
that same war, sounded its death knell and brought its dismemberment.
Hungary sundered its connection. The conglomerate realm was carved up, and
all that was left of the once formidable Holy Roman Empire was a shrunken
republic that led a miserable existence until, in more recent times, it
was, unlike its sister nation, completely extinguished and wiped off the
political map of Europe.

Such was the fate of the Napoleonic, the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, and
the Hapsburg empires, whose rulers, together with the sovereign occupant
of the Papal throne, were individually addressed by the Pen of the Most
High, and who were respectively chastised, forewarned, condemned, rebuked
and admonished. What of the fate of those sovereigns who, exercising
direct political jurisdiction over the Faith, its Founders, and followers,
and within the radius of whose domains that Faith was born and first
spread, were at liberty to crucify its Herald, banish its Founder, and mow
down its adherents?

WHAT OF TURKEY AND PERSIA?

Already in the lifetime of Baha'u'llah, and later during the ministry of
'Abdu'l-Baha, the first blows of a slow yet steady and relentless
retribution were falling alike upon the rulers of the Turkish House of
U_th_man and of the Qajar dynasty in Persia--the archenemies of God's
infant Faith. Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz fell from power, and was murdered soon
after Baha'u'llah's banishment from Adrianople, while Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah
succumbed to an assassin's pistol, during 'Abdu'l-Baha's incarceration in
the fortress-town of Akka. It was reserved, however, for the Formative
Period of the Faith of God--the Age of the birth and rise of its
Administrative Order--which, as stated in a previous communication, is
through its unfoldment casting such a turmoil in the world, to witness not
only the extinction of both of these dynasties, but also the abolition of
the twin institutions of the Sultanate and the Caliphate.

Of the two despots 'Abdu'l-'Aziz was the more powerful, the more exalted
in rank, the more preeminent in guilt, and the more concerned with the
tribulations and fortunes of the Founder of our Faith. He it was who,
through his farmans, had thrice banished Baha'u'llah, and in whose
dominions the Manifestation of God spent almost the whole of His forty
years' captivity. It was during his reign and that of his nephew and
successor, 'Abdu'l-Hamid