mporaneous with its rise and growth, has gone from strength to
strength, has preserved its unity and integrity, has diffused its light
over five continents, reared the institutions of its Administrative Order
and spread its ramifications to the four corners of the earth, and
launched its systematic campaigns in both the Western and Eastern
Hemispheres.

For such benefits, for such an arresting and majestic vindication of the
undefeatable powers inherent in our precious Faith, we can but bow our
heads in humility, awe and thanksgiving, renew our pledge of fealty to it,
and, each covenanting in his own heart, resolve to prove faithful to that
pledge, and persevere to the very end, until our earthly share of
servitude to so transcendent and priceless a Cause has been totally and
completely fulfilled.

June 15, 1946.

THE UTMOST VIGOR, VIGILANCE AND CONSECRATION

The new Plan on which the American Baha'i community has embarked, in the
course of the opening years of the second Baha'i century, is of such
vastness and complexity as to require the utmost vigor, vigilance and
consecration on the part of both the general body of its prosecutors and
those who are called upon, as their National elected representatives, to
conduct its operation, define its processes, watch over its execution, and
insure its ultimate success. The obstacles confronting both its
participants and organizers, particularly in the European field, are
formidable, and call for the utmost courage, perseverance, fortitude and
self-sacrifice.

The precarious international situation in both Hemispheres, the distress
and preoccupation of the masses, in most of the countries to which
pioneers will soon be proceeding, with the cares of every day life, the
severe restrictions which are still imposed on visitors and travellers in
foreign lands, the religious conservatism and spiritual lethargy which
characterize the population in most of the lands where the new pioneers
are to labor, add to the challenge of the task, and render all the more
glorious the labors of the national community that has arisen to achieve
what posterity will regard as the greatest collective enterprise, not only
in the history of the community itself, but in the annals of the Faith
with which it stands identified.

The initial success of the enterprise which has been so auspiciously
launched, the enthusiasm which it has already engendered throughout Latin
America, the hopes it