and peoples.  The economic resources of the world will be organized, its sources of raw materials will be tapped and fully utilized, its markets will be co-ordinated and developed, and the distribution of its products will be equitably regulated.

National rivalries, hatreds and intrigues will cease, and racial animosity and prejudice will be replaced by racial amity, understanding and co-operation.  The causes of religious strife will be permanently removed, economic barriers and restrictions will be completely abolished, and the inordinate distinction between classes will be obliterated.  Destitution on the one hand, and gross accumulation of ownership on the other, will disappear.  The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.

A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—­such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving.

Baha’u’llah’s message is one of hope, of love, of practical reconstruction.  Today we reap the appalling results of our forebears’ rejection of His divine call; but today there are new rulers, new people, who perchance may hear and avoid or mitigate the severity of impending catastrophe.  It is with this hope and believing it to be its sacred duty, that the Universal House of Justice, the international governing body of the Baha’i Faith, proclaims again, through publication of these selected passages, the essence of that mighty call of a century ago.  In the same hope and belief the Baha’is throughout the world will do their utmost during this centenary period to bring to the attention of their fellow-men the redeeming fact of this new outpouring of divine guidance and love.  We believe they will not labour in vain.

Haifa, 1967

SUMMONS TO THE KINGS AND RULERS OF THE WORLD COLLECTIVELY

“O kings of the earth!  He Who is the sovereign...”