is
the contrast between the manifestations of confident enthusiasm in which
the Plenipotentiaries at Versailles so freely indulged and the cry of
unconcealed distress which victors and vanquished alike are now raising in
the hour of bitter delusion.

A War-Weary World

Neither the force which the framers and guarantors of the Peace Treaties
have mustered, nor the lofty ideals which originally animated the author
of the Covenant of the League of Nations, have proved a sufficient bulwark
against the forces of internal disruption with which a structure so
laboriously contrived had been consistently assailed. Neither the
provisions of the so-called Settlement which the victorious Powers have
sought to impose, nor the machinery of an institution which America's
illustrious and far-seeing President had conceived, have proved, either in
conception or practice, adequate instruments to ensure the integrity of
the Order they had striven to establish. "The ills from which the world
now suffers," wrote 'Abdu'l-Baha in January, 1920, "will multiply; the
gloom which envelops it will deepen. The Balkans will remain discontented.
Its restlessness will increase. The vanquished Powers will continue to
agitate. They will resort to every measure that may rekindle the flame of
war. Movements, newly-born and world-wide in their range, will exert their
utmost effort for the advancement of their designs. The Movement of the
Left will acquire great importance. Its influence will spread."

Economic distress, since those words were written, together with political
confusion, financial upheavals, religious restlessness and racial
animosities, seem to have conspired to add immeasurably to the burdens
under which an impoverished, a war-weary world is groaning. Such has been
the cumulative effect of these successive crises, following one another
with such bewildering rapidity, that the very foundations of society are
trembling. The world, to whichever continent we turn our gaze, to however
remote a region our survey may extend, is everywhere assailed by forces it
can neither explain nor control.

Europe, hitherto regarded as the cradle of a highly-vaunted civilization,
as the torch-bearer of liberty and the mainspring of the forces of world
industry and commerce, stands bewildered and paralyzed at the sight of so
tremendous an upheaval. Long-cherished ideals in the political no less
than in the economic sphere of human activity are being