Leaves of One Tree: 'Abdu'l-Bahá at the Orient-Occident Conference

On April 20, 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed the Orient-Occident-Unity Conference at the Public Library Hall in Washington, D.C. Joseph H. Hannen took the notes that survive in *The Promulgation of Universal Peace.* The conference had been organised expressly to explore mutual understanding between the great civilisations of the East and West, and the Master used the occasion both to remind the audience of the resources they shared and to issue a clear charge.

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He began with an observation about cooperation as the natural foundation of human life:

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> In his life and being cooperation and association are essential. > Through association and meeting we find happiness and > development, individual and collective.

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He described how the village rises by the cooperation of its inhabitants, and the city rises by the cooperation of its villages, and the nation rises by the cooperation of its cities. What was now needed, He said, was the next step in the same sequence: the cooperation of the nations themselves.

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The Bahá’í foundation for that cooperation is the principle He invoked from Bahá’u’lláh:

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> Ye are all leaves of one tree and the drops of one sea.

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The world of humanity, He said, has been expressed by Bahá’u’lláh as a *unit — as one family.* On that foundation an international agreement is not a sentimental wish; it is a recognition of what already obtains.

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The Master then turned, in a courageous gesture, to His own Ottoman captors. The Committee of Union and Progress that had overthrown Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd in 1908 had freed Him from forty years of confinement in ‘Akká; it was that liberation, remarkable in itself, that had made the present American journey possible. He thanked them publicly.

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He concluded with the charge that gives the talk its place in American Bahá’í memory:

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> May this American democracy be the first nation to establish > the foundation of international agreement. May it be the first > nation to proclaim the universality of mankind.

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The democracy in question had not yet been asked, in any prior American oration, to take a role of that kind. The Master left it in the room, alongside the prayer that those present might be made instruments for it.

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