>>> "Sarracino"
<lms@pixie.co.za> 09/29/03 12:42PM >>>
Just a few comments on the outline of the
state of the world at the end of the nineteenth century which is presented in
the first sections of Century of Light:
John Keegan, in his book The History of
Warfare, points out that the century between the final conquest of Napoleon
(1815) and the start of the First World War (1914) was "the most peaceful
century of European history".
"The wealth generated by the century
paid, on a scale never before witnessed, for the works of real peace --
schools, universities, hospitals, roads, bridges, new cities, new workplaces,
the infrastructure of a vast and benevolent continental economy. It also generated, through taxes, improved public
health, higher birth rates, and a new and ingenious military technology, the
wherewithal to fight true war, through the creation of the strongest warrior
society the world had ever known."
He goes on to point out that in 1818 Europe
was 'a continent disarmed'. However, "Ninety-six years later, on the eve
of the First World War, almost every fit European male of military age had a
soldier's identity card among his personal papers, telling him where to report
for duty in the event of a general mobilization. The regimental depots bulged with spare weapons and uniforms to
kit the reservists out..."
In other words, by the early twentieth
century Europe was a continent which had enjoyed an unprecedented century of
peace and the accumulation of wealth, and yet it had become geared for a war
which would be the worst in history to date.
One cannot help relate this to Baha'u'llah's
offer to, primarily, the kings of Europe:
that they had the means at hand to accept the Most Great Peace in their
generation. In rejecting the Most Great
Peace, they sentenced their subjects - and all of mankind - to a period of
unprecedented trial and chastisement.
Robert