object, the weakness of the human mind, prone to conceit and
self-assurance in personal opinions, involve people in a welter of
emotions that blind their judgment and lead them far astray.... Even
though this phenomenon of Covenant-breaking seems to be an inherent aspect
of religion this does not mean it produces no damaging effect on the
Cause.... Above all it does not mean that a devastating effect is not
produced on the Centre of the Covenant himself. Shoghi Effendi's whole
life was darkened by the vicious personal attacks made upon him.(55)

This sombre background casts in an all the more brilliant light the
achievements of the Greatest Holy Leaf, sister of 'Abdu'l-Baha and last
survivor of the Faith's Heroic Age. Bahiyyih _Kh_anum played a vital role
in guarding the interests of the Cause after the Master's death and became
Shoghi Effendi's sole effective support. Her fidelity evoked from his pen
perhaps the most deeply moving passages he was ever to write. The
apostrophe he addressed to her after her passing in 1932 was set in a
letter to the Baha'is "throughout the West", which itself read in part:

Only future generations and pens abler than mine can, and will, pay a
worthy tribute to the towering grandeur of her spiritual life, to the
unique part she played throughout the tumultuous stages of Baha'i history,
to the expressions of unqualified praise that have streamed from the pen
of both Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Center of His covenant, though
unrecorded, and in the main unsuspected by the mass of her passionate
admirers in East and West, the share she has had in influencing the course
of some of the chief events in the annals of the Faith, the sufferings she
bore, the sacrifices she made, the rare gifts of unfailing sympathy she so
strikingly displayed--these, and many others stand so inextricably
interwoven with the fabric of the Cause itself that no future historian of
the Faith of Baha'u'llah can afford to ignore or minimize....Which of the
blessings am I to recount, which in her unfailing solicitude she showered
upon me, in the most critical and agitated hours of my life? To me,
standing in so dire a need of the vitalizing grace of God, she was the
living symbol of many an attribute I had learned to admire in
'Abdu'l-Baha.(56)

For long years, the Guardian felt that the protection of the Cause
required him to maintain silence about the deteriorating situation in the
Holy Family. Only as oppositi