or national interest. (By
national affairs is not meant matters that are political in their
character, for the friends of God the world over are strictly forbidden to
meddle with political affairs in any way whatever, but rather things that
affect the spiritual activities of the body of the friends in that land.)

Full harmony, however, as well as cooperation among the various local
assemblies and the members themselves, and particularly between each
assembly and the national body, is of the utmost importance, for upon it
depends the unity of the Cause of God, the solidarity of the friends, the
full, speedy and efficient working of the spiritual activities of His
loved ones.

Committees of the National Assembly

Large issues in such spiritual activities that affect the Cause in general
in that land, such as the management of the "Star of the West" and any
periodical which the National Body may decide to be a Baha'i organ, the
matter of publication, or reprinting Baha'i literature and its
distribution among the various assemblies, the means whereby the teaching
campaign may be stimulated and maintained, the work of the
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, the racial question in relation to the Cause, the
matter of receiving Orientals and association with them, the care and
maintenance of the precious film exhibiting a phase of the Master's
sojourn in the United States of America as well as the original matrix and
the records of His voice, and various other national spiritual activities,
far from being under the exclusive jurisdiction of any local assembly or
group of friends, must each be minutely and fully directed by a special
board, elected by the National Body, constituted as a committee thereof,
responsible to it and upon which the National Body shall exercise constant
and general supervision.

The time is indeed ripe for the manifold activities, wherein the servants
and handmaids of Baha'u'llah are so devoutly and earnestly engaged, to be
harmonized and conducted with unity, cooperation and efficiency, that the
effect of such a combined and systematized effort, through which an
All-powerful Spirit is steadily pouring, may transcend every other
achievement of the past, however glorious it has been, and may stand, now
that, to the eyes of the outside world the glorious Person of the Master
is no more, a convincing testimony of the potency of His everliving
Spirit.

Your brother and co-worker in His Cause,
SHOGHI.