The fourth year of this Ten-Year Crusade, endowed with such tremendous
potentialities, has witnessed, in the Cradle of the Faith, and in direct
consequence of the strenuous, the concerted and persistent efforts exerted
by the champion-builders of this embryonic World Order, holding aloft the
standard of an unconquerable Faith in the American and European
continents, and reinforced by the voice of men of eminence in both the
East and the West, and, particularly, by responsible officials, occupying
high positions in various agencies of the United Nations, a victory over
the ecclesiastical forces leagued against it and a fanatical population
determined to extirpate it root and branch--a victory which must rank as
one of the most striking among those won in the Formative Age of the
Baha'i Dispensation. The numerous properties, serving, for the most part,
as the administrative headquarters of the Faith, and scattered throughout
the provinces of that sorely tried land, outstanding among which is the
House of the Bab in _Sh_iraz--the holiest spot in that country, the scene
of the birth of His Revelation, and the ordained Center of
Pilgrimage--have, pursuant to orders issued by the central authorities in
Tihran, been returned to their owners, despite the protests of a
relentless and powerful clergy, the agitation of a hostile population, and
the importunate demands made by prominent members of the Legislature to
outlaw and disendow the Faith, confiscate its literature, raze to the
ground its principal edifices, deport its chief supporters, and root it
out of the provinces. A firm and categorical assurance has, moreover, been
given by the Chief Magistrate and the head of his Cabinet to the national
representatives of the Persian Baha'i Community that their national
administrative headquarters in Tihran, together with all its furnishings,
books and documents, which have thus far been kept intact in that edifice,
will be restored.
Whilst so conspicuous a victory was being registered by a persecuted Faith
in the land of its birth over the combined forces of its traditional
adversaries, its stalwart standard-bearers, in both hemispheres, have, in
accordance with their solemn pledges, given at the time of the inception
of the Ten-Year Crusade, been pursuing their historic task of enlarging
the orbit, and of consolidating the institutions, of a rapidly maturing
Administrative Order.