sight
of a slowly disrupting civilization, it will--I can have no doubt--continue
to fulfil unflinchingly the immediate requirements of its task, assured
that with every step it takes and with each stage it traverses, a fresh
revelation of Divine light and strength will guide and propel it forward
until it consummates, in the fulness of time and in the plenitude of its
power, the Plan inseparably bound up with its shining destiny.

July 4, 1939

THE MOST FATEFUL HOUR

A triple call, clear-voiced, insistent and inescapable, summons to the
challenge all members of the American Baha'i community, at this, the most
fateful hour in their history. The first is the voice, distant and
piteous, of those sister communities which now, alas, are fettered by the
falling chains of religious orthodoxy and isolated through the cruel
barriers set up by a rampant nationalism. The second is the plea, no less
vehement and equally urgent, of those peoples and nations of the New
World, whose vast and unexplored territories await to be warmed by the
light and swept into the orbit of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. The third,
more universal and stirring than either of the others, is the call of
humanity itself crying out for deliverance at a time when the tide of
mounting evils has destroyed its equilibrium and is now strangling its
very life.

These imperative calls of Baha'i duty the American believers can
immediately if only partially answer. Their present status, their
circumscribed resources, debar them, however great their eagerness, from
responding completely and decisively to the full implications of this
threefold obligation. They can, neither individually nor through their
concerted efforts, impose directly their will upon those into whose hands
the immediate destinies of their persecuted brethren are placed. Nor are
they as yet capable of launching a campaign of such magnitude as could
capture the imagination and arouse the conscience of mankind, and thereby
insure the immediate and full redress of those grievances from which their
helpless coreligionists in both the East and the West are suffering. They
cannot moreover hope to wield at the present time in the councils of
nations an influence commensurate with the stupendous claims advanced, or
adequate to the greatness of the Cause proclaimed, by the Author of their
Faith. Nor can they assume a position or exercise such responsibilities as
would enable them by their acts and