triumphant banner of
Baha'u'llah? Who else but the members of this community have won the
eternal distinction of being the first to raise the call of Ya
Baha'u'l-Abha in such highly important and widely scattered centers and
territories as the hearts of both the British and French empires, Germany,
the Far East, the Balkan States, the Scandinavian countries, Latin
America, the Islands of the Pacific, South Africa, Australia and New
Zealand, and now more recently the Baltic States? Who else but those same
pioneers have shown themselves ready to undertake the labor, to exercise
the patience, and to provide the funds, required for the translation and
publication, in no less than forty languages, of their sacred literature,
the dissemination of which is an essential prerequisite to any effectively
organized campaign of teaching? What other community can lay claim to have
had a decisive share in the worldwide efforts that have been exerted for
the safeguarding and the extension of the immediate surroundings of its
holy shrines, as well as for the preliminary acquisition of the future
sites of its international institutions at its world center? What other
community can to its eternal credit claim to have been the first to frame
its national and local constitutions, thereby laying down the fundamental
lines of the twin charters designed to regulate the activities, define the
functions, and safeguard the rights, of its institutions? What other
community can boast of having simultaneously acquired and legally secured
the basis of its national endowments, thus paving the way for a similar
action on the part of its local communities? What other community has
achieved the supreme distinction of having obtained, long before any of
its sister communities had envisaged such a possibility, the necessary
documents assuring the recognition, by both the federal and state
authorities, of its Spiritual Assemblies and national endowments? And
finally what other community has had the privilege, and been granted the
means, to succor the needy, to plead the cause of the downtrodden, and to
intervene so energetically for the safeguarding of Baha'i edifices and
institutions in countries such as Persia, Egypt, 'Iraq, Russia, and
Germany, where, at various times, its fellow-believers have had to suffer
the rigors of both religious and racial persecution?

Such a matchless and brilliant record of service, extending over a period
of well-nigh twenty