The
process of disintegration must inexorably continue, and its corrosive influence
must penetrate deeper and deeper into the very core of a crumbling age. Much
suffering will still be required ere the contending nations, creeds, classes
and races of mankind are fused in the crucible of universal affliction, and are
forged by the fires of a fierce ordeal into one organic commonwealth, one vast,
unified, and harmoniously functioning system, Adversities unimaginably
appalling, undreamed of crises and upheavals, war, famine, and pestilence,
might well combine to engrave in the soul of an unheeding generation those
truths and principles which it has disdained to recognize and follow. A
paralysis more painful than any it has yet experienced must creep over and
further afflict the fabric of a broken society ere it can be rebuilt and
regenerated. (Shoghi Effendi, from a letter dated 11 March 1936 to the Bahá'ís
of the West, published in ‘The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh: Selected Letters’)
