objective will
challenge and galvanize all other agencies functioning in Latin America
and European continent to follow the superb example set for sister
committees laboring at the heart of the mother community of the Western
hemisphere.

Cablegram June 13, 1946

A GOD-GIVEN MANDATE

The opening years of the second century of the Baha'i Era are witnessing
the launching of yet another stage of an enterprise the range of whose
unfolding processes we can, at the present time, but dimly visualize.
However familiar we may be with its origin, however conscious of its
magnitude and bold character, however cognizant of the signal success that
has attended its initial operation, in the Western Hemisphere, we find
ourselves nevertheless incapable of either grasping the import of its
tremendous potentialities, or of correctly appraising the significance of
the present phase of its development. Nor can we assess its reaction, as
the momentum of the mysterious forces driving it onward augments, on the
fortunes of the divers communities whose members are consciously laboring
for the achievement of purposes akin to the high aims that animate its
promoters, or estimate its impact, as its scope is further enlarged and
its fruition is accelerated, on the immediate destinies of mankind in
general.

The impulse from which this historic world-embracing crusade, which, alike
in the character of its Founder and the nature of the tasks committed to
its participants, is unprecedented in religious history, derives its
creative power may be said to have in a sense originated with the mandate
issued by the Bab in His "Qayyumu'l-Asma," one of His earliest and
greatest works, as far back as the opening years of the first Baha'i
century, and directed specifically to the "peoples of the West," to "issue
forth" from their "cities" and aid His Cause.

To this initial impulse given by the Herald of our Faith, whilst confined
in the heart of far-away Asia, a still greater force was communicated, and
a more specific direction given, when the Author of our Faith Himself,
having already set foot on the fringes of the continent of Europe,
addressed, in His Kitab-i-Aqdas, from behind the walls of the prison-city
of Akka, some of the most celebrated passages of that Book to the Chief
Magistrates of the entire American continent, bidding them "bind with the
hands of justice the broken," and "crush the oppressor" with the "rod of
the commandments"