have
forsaken their homes, who have scattered far and wide, who have willingly
sacrificed their comfort, their health and even their lives for the
prosecution of this Plan; to the several committees and their auxiliary
agencies that have been entrusted with special and direct responsibility
for its efficient and orderly development and who have discharged their
high responsibilities with exemplary vigor, courage and fidelity; to the
national representatives of the community itself, who have vigilantly and
tirelessly supervised, directed and coordinated the unfolding processes of
this vast undertaking ever since its inception; to all those who, though
not in the forefront of battle, have through their financial assistance
and through the instrumentality of their deputies, contributed to the
expansion and consolidation of the Plan, I myself, as well as the entire
Baha'i world, owe a debt of gratitude that no one can measure or describe.
To the sacrifices they have made, to the courage they have so consistently
shown, to the fidelity they have so remarkably displayed, to the
resourcefulness, the discipline, the constancy and devotion they have so
abundantly demonstrated, future generations viewing the magnitude of their
labors in their proper perspective, will no doubt pay adequate tribute--a
tribute no less ardent and well-deserved than the recognition extended by
the present-day builders of the World Order of Baha'u'llah to the
Dawn-Breakers, whose shining deeds have signalized the birth of the Heroic
Age of His Faith.

To the elected representatives of all the Baha'i communities of the New
World, assembled beneath the Dome of the Mother Temple of the West, on the
occasion of the historic, first All-American Baha'i Convention--a
Convention at which every state and province in the North American
continent is represented, in which the representatives of every Republic
of Latin America have been invited to participate, whose delegates have
been elected, for the first time in American Baha'i history, by all local
communities already possessing Assemblies, by all groups and isolated
believers throughout the United States and Canada, and whose proceedings
will be for ever associated with the celebration of the Centenary of the
Faith of Baha'u'llah, of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of
'Abdu'l-Baha, of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Baha'i
Faith in the Western Hemisphere, and of the completion of the ext