re already functioning--a feat that has outstripped
the goal originally fixed for the valiant members of that Community in
their inter-continental sphere of Baha'i activity. The exterior
ornamentation of the first Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the West--the
culmination of a forty year old enterprise repeatedly blessed and
continually nurtured by 'Abdu'l-Baha has, furthermore, through a
remarkable manifestation of the spirit of Baha'i solidarity and
self-sacrifice so powerfully animating the members of that stalwart
community, been successfully completed, more than a year in advance of the
time set for its termination.

The triple task undertaken with such courage, confidence, zeal and
determination--a task which ever since the inception of the Seven Year Plan
has challenged and galvanized into action the entire body of the American
believers and for the efficient prosecution of which processes of a
divinely appointed Administrative Order had, during no less than sixteen
years, been steadily evolving--is now finally accomplished and crowned with
total victory.

The greatest collective enterprise ever launched by the Western followers
of Baha'u'llah and indeed ever undertaken by any Baha'i community in the
course of an entire century, has been gloriously consummated. A victory of
undying fame has marked the culmination of the fifty year long labors of
the American Baha'i community in the service of Baha'u'llah and has shed
imperishable lustre on the immortal records of His Faith during the first
hundred years of its existence. The exploits that have marked the progress
of this prodigious, this three-fold enterprise, covering a field
stretching from Alaska in the North to the extremity of Chile in the
South, affecting the destinies of so great a variety of peoples and
nations, involving such a tremendous expenditure of treasure and effort,
calling forth so remarkable a spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice, and
undertaken notwithstanding the vicious assaults and incessant machinations
of the breakers of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Covenant, and despite the perils, the
trials and restrictions of a desolating war of unexampled severity, augur
well for the successful prosecution, and indeed assure the ultimate
victory, of the remaining stages of the Plan conceived, a quarter of a
century ago, by 'Abdu'l-Baha for the followers of Baha'u'llah in the North
American continent.

To the band of pioneers, whether settlers or itinerant teachers, who