more recently achieved by their North
American fellow-believers and which have shed such luster on the closing
decade of that same century.

SPIRITUAL CRUSADE TO BE LAUNCHED IN EUROPE

To the fourth, and by far the most momentous, the most arduous, the most
challenging task to be carried out under the Second Seven Year Plan--the
systematic launching of a crusade in a mighty, a tormented, a spiritually
famished continent, a continent drawn, in recent years through political
developments as well as through improvement in the means of
transportation, so close to the great republic of the West, and
constituting a stepping-stone on the road leading to the redemption of the
Old World--I must now direct the attention of my readers.

This as yet unfought and unbelievably potent crusade, embarked upon in the
opening decade of the second century of the Baha'i Era, signalizing the
commencement of the second epoch of the Formative Age of the Dispensation
of Baha'u'llah, and marking the first stage in the propulsion of a
divinely conceived Plan across the borders of the Western Hemisphere,
must, as its pace augments, reveal the first signs and tokens which, as
anticipated by the Author of the Plan Himself, must accompany the carrying
of His Father's Message across the ocean, at the hands of His "apostles,"
from the shores of their homeland to the European continent. "The moment,"
is His powerfully sustaining, gloriously inspiring promise, "this Divine
Message is carried forward by the American believers from the shores of
America, and is propagated through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of
Africa and of Australia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this
community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an
everlasting dominion. Then will all the peoples of the world witness that
this community is spiritually illumined and divinely guided. Then will the
whole earth resound with the praises of its majesty and greatness."

The first stage in this transatlantic field of service which those
crusading for the Cause of Baha'u'llah in the Western Hemisphere are now
entering is a step fraught with possibilities such as no mind can
adequately envisage. Its challenge is overwhelming and its potentialities
unfathomable. Its hazards, rigors and pitfalls are numerous, its field
immense, the number of its promoters as yet utterly inadequate, the
resources required for its effective prosecution barely tapped.