I, moreover, call to mind, on this occasion, the successive episodes
which, on the morrow of 'Abdu'l-Baha's ascension, in the course of the
initial epoch of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Dispensation, signalized
the emergence of those administrative institutions, both local and
national, which proclaimed the germination of those potent seeds which had
lain dormant for more than a decade in these newly opened European
territories, and which culminated in the construction of the framework of
the Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah and the erection of
the first two pillars destined to sustain in that continent the weight of
the final unit of that Order.
Nor can I fail to acclaim, as a further milestone in the irresistible
evolution of that Faith, the launching, following the creation of the
administrative agencies designed to provide the effectual instruments for
its propagation, of the Six-Year Plan of the British Baha'i Community
followed successively by the European Teaching Campaign, inaugurated in
accordance with the provisions of the Second Seven-Year Plan of the
American Baha'i Community, the Five-Year Plan conceived by the German and
Austrian Baha'i Communities and the Two-Year Plan later initiated by the
British Baha'i Community--Plans which, within less than a decade, succeeded
in laying the structural basis of the Administrative Order of the Faith in
Wales, in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in Eire, in multiplying and
consolidating Baha'i institutions throughout the British Isles, in
broadening and strengthening the foundations of that same Order in Germany
and Austria, in erecting the National Administrative Headquarters of the
Faith in the city of Frankfurt, in establishing spiritual assemblies in
the capital cities of no less than ten sovereign states in Europe, in
reinforcing the administrative foundations of that Faith in those
territories, in providing the means for the convocation of five European,
and a series of regional, teaching conferences, and above all, in the
convocation of the historic convention in Florence culminating in the
emergence of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Italy and
Switzerland, the third in a series of institutions destined to play their
part in the eventual establishment of the supreme legislative body of the
Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah.
The hour is now ripe for these communities whether new or old, local or
national, already functioning on the northern, the western and the
southern fringes of that continent, as well as those situated in its very
heart, to initiate befittingly and prosecute energetically the European
campaign of a global Crusade which will not only contribute, to an
unprecedented degree, to the broadening and the consolidation of the
foundations of the Faith of Baha'u'llah on the continent of Europe, but
will also diffuse its light over the neighboring islands, and will, God
willing, carry its radiance to the eastern territories of that continent,
and beyond them as far as the heart of Asia.