Happy to convey to assembled friends at epoch-making conference the news
of the magnificent response by Baha'i communities in the East and in the
West, during the course of the less than three-month interval separating
the second and third Intercontinental Conferences of this Holy Year, to
the call to arise and befittingly inaugurate the opening phase of the
World Crusade. The number of the pioneers, whether white or colored, young
or old, on all continents who volunteered for service in both virgin and
open territories is past the two hundred mark, including three offers for
the leper colonies. Ruanda-Urundi, Samoan Islands, Daman, Southern
Rhodesia, Goa, Kodiak Island and Italian Somaliland are already opened.
The settlement of French Equatorial Africa, Solomon Islands, Queen
Charlotte Islands, South West Africa, Cape Verde Islands, Togoland,
Mauritius, Reunion Island, St. Helena Island, St. Thomas Island, Channel
Islands, Aleutian Islands, Azores, Key West, Cook Islands, Monaco,
Balearic Islands, Malta, Cyprus, Hebrides Islands, Northern Territories
Protectorate, Seychelles, Andorra, Canary Islands and French Somaliland is
virtually assured. The northern outposts of the Faith in the Western
Hemisphere have been pushed as far as Arctic Bay, Franklin, seventy-three
degrees north latitude, and in Europe as far as the Lofoten Islands. A
pioneer is en route to Fezzan, Libya, chosen scene of 'Abdu'l-Baha's
banishment by 'Abdu'l-Hamid.
All the areas within the Western Hemisphere allocated to the United States
National Assembly are assigned. A third of the membership of that same
Assembly is joining the ranks of the pioneers. The remaining sister
national assemblies are now vying in a spiritual race to complete
assignments in their respective continents. Funds are inaugurated and
sites are being investigated for the purchase of land for the
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kars of Rome, Panama City and Toronto and for a national
Haziratu'l-Quds in London. I appeal to the attendants at this conference,
in thanksgiving for the manifold blessings abundantly showered upon
Baha'u'llah's crusaders, to immortalize their proceedings through the
inauguration of funds for the purchase of sites for Temples in that
northern city, the scene of the present conference, and in Frankfurt in
the heart of the European continent. I am contributing two thousand pounds
for the furtherance of these meritorious enterprises.
I urge, moreover, that the participants, in view of the disproportionately
small number of pioneers destined for virgin territories in relation to
the total of volunteers, swell the roll of honor through enlisting
promptly under the unfurled banner of the advancing hosts of Baha'u'llah.
No worthier contribution can be offered on the altar of Baha'i sacrifice,
no greater honor won during the course of the Holy Year now swiftly
drawing to its close.
[July 1953]