The phenomenal advances made since the inception of this globe-girdling
Crusade, in the brief space of less than five years, eclipses--if we pause
to ponder the scope and significance of recent developments--in both the
number and quality of the feats achieved by its prosecutors, any previous
collective enterprise undertaken by the followers of the Faith, at any
time and in any part of the world, since the close of the initial and most
turbulent epoch of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Dispensation.
The raising of the number of Baha'i centers--foci and pivots of Baha'i
teaching and administrative activity--all over the globe, from twenty-five
hundred to forty-five hundred; of the number of countries, both sovereign
States and Dependencies, included within the pale of the Faith from one
hundred and twenty-eight to two hundred and fifty-four; and of the number
of Baha'i national and regional Spiritual Assemblies--forerunners of the
Universal House of Justice--from twelve to twenty-six; the substantial
multiplication of Baha'i local Spiritual Assemblies--constituting the
foundation of a rising Administrative Order--throughout five continents,
whose number has now passed the thousand mark; the planting of the banner
of the Faith in over seventy islands, situated in the Pacific, the
Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean and the
North Sea; the establishment of its northernmost outpost beyond the Arctic
Circle, in far-off Thule, Greenland; the erection and completion, in the
Holy Land itself, at the cost of over a quarter of a million dollars, of
the Baha'i International Archives, heralding the emergence, in its
plenitude, of the seat of the embryonic World Order of Baha'u'llah on the
slopes of Mt. Carmel and facing the Qiblih of the Baha'i world; the
enlargement of the scope of Baha'i international endowments in the twin
cities of Akka and Haifa, constituting the World Center of the Faith,
until their present value can now be estimated at over five and a half
million dollars; a corresponding extension of Baha'i national endowments
in the Great Republic of the West--the stronghold of the Baha'i
Administrative Order--the value of which is fast approaching five million
dollars, and of Baha'i holdings in the Cradle of the Faith, conservatively
estimated to be well over forty million tumans; the acquisition of no less
than forty-eight National Haziratu'l-Quds--the central administrative
headquarters of Baha'i communities established in the sovereign States and
chief Dependencies of the globe--involving an expenditure of over half a
million dollars; the founding of Baha'i national endowments in no less
than fifty capitals and chief cities of all five continents, the cost of
which may be estimated to be at least one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars; the initiation of the construction of the Mother Temples of both
Africa and Australia, as well as the purchase of eleven Temple sites for
over two hundred thousand dollars; the incorporation of over ninety
national and local Spiritual Assemblies, raising the total number of
incorporated Assemblies the world over to over two hundred; the
translation of Baha'i literature into one hundred and forty-eight
languages, of which no less than seventy-two are over and above those
called for by the provisions of the Ten-Year Plan, bringing the total
number of languages to two hundred and thirty-seven; as well as a series
of additional accomplishments, too numerous to recount, supplementing the
objectives of that Plan, in connection with the opening of virgin
territories, the acquisition of Temple sites, the inauguration of Baha'i
schools, the founding of Baha'i local endowments, the establishment of
local Haziratu'l-Quds, the formulation of subsidiary Plans, the initiation
of a Baha'i Publishing Trust, the purchase of Baha'i Holy Sites, and of
plots for Baha'i burial-grounds and for Baha'i summer schools--all these
can be regarded by any fair-minded observer in no other light except as
the manifestations of a momentous progress as diversified in character as
it is far-reaching in its import.