Would destroy all cities

Here’s an article, in two parts, in the December 16 1932 edition of the Toronto Daily Star that describes an interview with a self-styled messiah who advocated the destruction of all cities with a population greater than 100,000.

A Google search for Bek Ar-Khan, the would-be messiah, turned up nothing. Perhaps this is just as well, since many of us live in cities with population greater than 100,000.

Pierre van Paassen (1895-1968), the author of this article, was a journalist, writer, and Unitarian minister. Among other things, he spent ten days as a prisoner in Germany’s Dachau concentration camp in 1933.