ositive will spread; it will become the desire of
others, growing stronger until it reaches the minds of all men.

Universal Language

Having glanced at the principal causes of war and how they may be avoided,
we may now proceed to examine certain constructive proposals made by
Baha'u'llah with a view to achieving the Most Great Peace.

The first deals with the establishment of a universal auxiliary language.
Baha'u'llah refers to this matter in the Book of Aqdas and in many of His
Tablets. Thus in the Tablet of I_sh_raqat He says:--

The Sixth I_sh_raq (Effulgence) is Concord and Union amongst men.
Through the radiance of Union have the regions of the world at all
times been illumined, and the greatest of all means thereunto is
the understanding of one another's writing and speech. Ere this,
in Our Epistles, have We commanded the Trustees of the House of
Justice, either to choose one of the existing tongues, or to
originate a new one, and in like manner to adopt a common script,
teaching these to the children in all the schools of the world,
that the world may become even as one land and one home.

About the time when this proposal of Baha'u'llah was first given to the
world, there was born in Poland a boy named Ludovic Zamenhof, who was
destined to play a leading part in carrying it into effect. Almost from
his infancy, the ideal of a universal language became a dominant motive in
Zamenhof's life, and the result of his devoted labors was the invention
and widespread adoption of the language known as Esperanto, which has now
stood the test of many years and has proved to be a very satisfactory
medium of international intercourse. It has the great advantage that it
can be mastered in about a twentieth part of the time required to master
such languages as English, French or German. At an Esperanto banquet given
in Paris in February 1913, 'Abdu'l-Baha said:--

Today one of the chief causes of the differences in Europe is the
diversity of languages. We say this man is a German, the other is
an Italian, then we meet an Englishman and then again a Frenchman.
Although they belong to the same race, yet language is the
greatest barrier between them. Were a universal auxiliary language
in operation they would all be considered as one.

His Holiness Baha'u'llah wrote about this international language
more than forty years ago. He says that a