historic
journeys on December 5, 1913.

It was in the course of these epoch-making journeys and before large and
representative audiences, at times exceeding a thousand people, that
'Abdu'l-Baha expounded, with brilliant simplicity, with persuasiveness and
force, and for the first time in His ministry, those basic and
distinguishing principles of His Father's Faith, which together with the
laws and ordinances revealed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas constitute the bed-rock
of God's latest Revelation to mankind. The independent search after truth,
unfettered by superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human
race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the
basic unity of all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice,
whether religious, racial, class or national; the harmony which must exist
between religion and science; the equality of men and women, the two wings
on which the bird of human kind is able to soar; the introduction of
compulsory education; the adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the
abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty; the institution of a
world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations; the
exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of
worship; the glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human
society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples
and nations; and the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as
the supreme goal of all mankind--these stand out as the essential elements
of that Divine polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as
well as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys.
The exposition of these vitalizing truths of the Faith of Baha'u'llah,
which He characterized as the "spirit of the age," He supplemented with
grave and reiterated warnings of an impending conflagration which, if the
statesmen of the world should fail to avert, would set ablaze the entire
continent of Europe. He, moreover, predicted, in the course of these
travels, the radical changes which would take place in that continent,
foreshadowed the movement of the decentralization of political power which
would inevitably be set in motion, alluded to the troubles that would
overtake Turkey, anticipated the persecution of the Jews on the European
continent, and categorically asserted that the "banner of the unity of
mankind would be hoisted, that the taberna