William I, the pride-intoxicated newly-acclaimed conqueror of Napoleon
III, admonished in the Kitab-i-Aqdas and bidden to ponder the fate that
had overtaken "one whose power transcended" his own, warned in that same
Book, that the "lamentations of Berlin" would be raised and that the banks
of the Rhine would be "covered with gore," sustained two attempts on his
life, and was succeeded by a son who died of a mortal disease, three
months after his accession to the throne, bequeathing the throne to the
arrogant, the headstrong and short-sighted William II. The pride of the
new monarch precipitated his downfall. Revolution, swiftly and suddenly,
broke out in his capital, communism reared its head in a number of cities;
the princes of the German states abdicated, and he himself, fleeing
ignominiously to Holland, was compelled to relinquish his right to the
throne. The constitution of Weimar sealed the fate of the empire, whose
birth had been so loudly proclaimed by his grandfather, and the terms of
an oppressively severe treaty provoked "the lamentations" which, half a
century before, had been ominously prophesied.

The arbitrary and unyielding Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria and king
of Hungary, who had been reproved in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, for having
neglected his manifest duty to inquire about Baha'u'llah during his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was so engulfed by misfortunes and tragedies
that his reign came to be regarded as one unsurpassed by any other reign
in the calamities it inflicted upon the nation. His brother, Maximilian,
was put to death in Mexico; the Crown Prince Rudolph perished in
ignominious circumstances; the Empress was assassinated; Archduke Francis
Ferdinand and his wife were murdered in Serajevo; the "ramshackle empire"
itself disintegrated, was carved up, and a shrunken republic was set up on
the ruins of a vanished Holy Roman Empire--a republic which, after a brief
and precarious existence, was blotted out from the political map of
Europe.

Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, who, in a
Tablet addressed to him by name had been thrice warned by Baha'u'llah, had
been bidden to "summon the nations unto God," and had been cautioned not
to allow his sovereignty to prevent him from recognizing "the Supreme
Sovereign," suffered several attempts on his life, and at last died at the
hand of an assassin. A harsh policy of repression, initiated by himself
and followed by his successo