They included presentations… in synagogues and churches; the International
Peace Forum and various peace societies; Columbia, Howard, and Stanford
Universities; the Reading Room for the Blind in San Francisco; the Chicago
Athletic Association; theosophical societies; Esperantist groups; the Green
Acre Institute in Maine; the Commercial Club in Minneapolis; the Japanese YMCA
in Oakland; the Persian-American Society in Washington; the Bethel Literary and
Historical Society; the Bowery Mission; and the Atheist’s Club in San
Francisco. He was the featured speaker for the Unitarians’ national conference;
shared the platform with Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation
of Labor, at the D.A.R. Continental Memorial Hall in Washington, D.C.; and
addressed gatherings in the Town Hall in Fanwood, New Jersey, in the Persian
Embassy and the Turkish Embassy in Washington, and in hotel assembly rooms and
banquet halls across the country. He visited William Jennings Bryan’s home in
Lincoln, Nebraska, to repay a visit Bryan had tried to make to ‘Abdu’l-Baha in ‘Akka,
and had tea with Mrs. Bryan and her daughter. He was invited by Admiral Peary,
then recently acknowledged as discoverer of the North Pole, to address the
Unity Club in Brooklyn; was sought out by former President of the United
States, Theodore Roosevelt; was honored with a farewell breakfast by the Treasurer
of the United States, Lee McClung; and visited the home of another official who
“took Him [‘Abdu’l-Baha] in his embrace and wept for joy and happiness.”
(Mahmud’s Diary)
- Allan Ward (‘Abdu’l-Baha: Speaking in America; World
Order magazine, Winter 1971-72)