its foundations, tarnish its glory and
extinguish its light. A long-abused, down-trodden, sorely tried community,
constituting the overwhelming majority of Baha'u'llah's followers,
subjected recently to the strain and stress of a violent recrudescence of
persecution, which was marked throughout by intense vilification,
intimidation, spoliation, expulsion, arson, rape, and murder, has emerged
triumphant from yet another gruelling experience--a testing period of
exceptional severity--its unity unbroken, its confidence reinforced, its
prestige considerably enhanced, its fame noised abroad to an unprecedented
degree, its administrative agencies unshaken, its endowments unimpaired,
and the grim, boastful and reiterated threats of its sworn enemies to
outlaw it through formal legislative action, confiscate its property,
demolish its edifices, imprison and deport its members, and extirpate it,
root and branch, in the native land of its Founder unenforced.

PROGRESSIVE UNFOLDMENT OF THE TEN-YEAR CRUSADE

Simultaneous with this marvelous, awe-inspiring interposition of
Providence, at this critical stage in the mysterious evolution and the
resistless progress of God's infant Faith in the land of its birth,
towards the two shining goals of complete emancipation from the shackles
of religious orthodoxy and of state recognition, an equally significant
development can be noted, during the last twelve-month, in the progressive
unfoldment, beyond the confines of this storm-tossed land, and stretching
to the farthest corners of the earth, of the Ten-Year Plan, now entering
upon the third, and what promises to be the most brilliant, phase in its
execution.

This world-encompassing enterprise, embarked upon, three years ago, on the
occasion of the world-wide celebrations commemorating the centenary of the
birth of the Mission of the Founder of our Faith, has, in all phases of
its operation, throughout five continents, as well as the islands of the
seas, gathered swift momentum, and is demonstrating, in both its
territorial and institutional aspects, a vitality, and has registered
successes, that have far exceeded the expectations of even the most
sanguine among its promoters.

The number of localities into which the light of this unconquerable Faith,
now radiating the splendor of its glory over the face of the planet, has
penetrated, has swelled to well nigh thirty-seven hundred, marking an
increase of almost five hundred in th