A special tribute, I feel, should be paid in this survey of worldwide
Baha'i achievements, to the heroic band of pioneers, and particularly to
the company of the Knights of Baha'u'llah, who, as a result of their
indomitable spirit, courage, steadfastness, and self-abnegation, have
achieved in the course of four brief years, in so many of the virgin
territories newly opened to His Faith, a measure of success far exceeding
the most sanguine expectations. Such a success, reflected in both the
numerical strength of these territories and the range and solidity of the
achievements of the Baha'i crusaders responsible for their opening and
development, has surpassed to an unbelievable extent the goals set for
them under the Ten-Year Plan.
To Uganda, opened on the eve of the Global Crusade, where the number of
the avowed adherents of the Faith has now passed the eleven hundred mark,
and the number of Baha'i centers exceeds one hundred and eighty, to the
Gilbert and Ellice Islands and Gambia where the number of the believers
has reached five hundred and three hundred respectively, must be added
Mentawai Islands, where adult Baha'is now number over eleven hundred; the
British Cameroons, with well-nigh three hundred adult Baha'is; Mauritius
with over seventy; Basutoland with over fifty; Ruanda-Urundi and the
Seychelles, each with over thirty; Spanish Morocco, Reunion Island, the
French Cameroons, British Togoland, French Togoland, Sikkim, the Canary
Islands, British Guiana, Cape Verde Islands, Ashanti Protectorate,
Swaziland, South Rhodesia, each with over twenty; and Key West, French
Equatorial Africa, Cook Islands, Balearic Islands, French Somaliland,
Italian Somaliland, Cyprus, Morocco International Zone, Samoa Islands,
Mariana Islands, New Hebrides Islands, Solomon Islands, Portuguese Timor,
Bechuanaland, Northern Territories Protectorate, Bahama Islands, and
Brunei, each with between ten and twenty.