‘Abdu’l-Bahá Here

Leader of the Bahá’í Movement Comes to Present Peace Message.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a distinguished Persian, who is at the head of the Bahá’í movement for the unification of religious, arrived in New York on the White Star liner Cedric yesterday. It is his first visit to the United States, and with the single exception of a short visit to Paris and London last Summer, this is the first time in more than forty years he has left the “prison city” of Acre, in Syria, to which he and his father, Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í movement, were exiled by the Turkish Government fifty years ago.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá comes to us on a mission of peace and will deliver one of his principle addresses before the Peace Conferenct at Lake Mohonk the latter part of this month, after which he will deliver addresses before various peace societies, religious organizations, and educational bodies. As he puts it, he is ready to speak “wherever an audience can be found to welcome peace and promote the realization of the brotherhood of man.”

When the Cedric was opposite the Statue of Liberty ‘Abdu’l-Bahá extended his arms in a salute and referred to his own long exile in Syria. Then, he talked of world-wide peace, which he termed the greatest of all causes. The diversity of faiths and the lack of universal auxiliary languages he mentioned as the obstacles that are to be surmounted in the attainment of the peace program.

Here a reporter interrupted to ask what “Bahá’í” means.

“It means,” answered ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” to love all the world, to love humanity, to serve it, to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.”

The skyline of New York greatly interested ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He called the big skyscrapers “the minarets of Western world’s commerce and industry.”

On the pier a thousand people, most of them followers of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, were there to greet him and the welcome pleased him immensely.

Fellow-passengers of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were Senator Pasquale Fiore of the Italian Senate in Rome, Mr. and Mrs. B.C. Barber, the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Francis E. Clark, Tomaso D’Armato, Chancellor of of Italian Embassy in Washington; Dr. J.M. Knott, Dr. and Mrs. Stanley Millar, who have been on a tour of the Nile country; Mr. and Mrs. John Paret, and Mr. and Mrs. C.B. Tyler.