co-workers:

The progress achieved in recent years, and particularly since the
inception of the Ten-Year Plan, by both the German and Austrian Baha'i
communities, in the field of teaching and administrative spheres of Baha'i
activity, has been such as to evoke feelings of deep and abiding gratitude
in my heart, and to excite the admiration of their sister communities in
both the East and the West.

Emerging more than a decade ago, from a prolonged period of adversity,
which served to purge, discipline and spiritually quicken the nations to
which these communities belong; abundantly demonstrating, throughout the
afflictive trial they underwent, the sterling qualities of their faith and
the depth of their unalterable devotion to the Cause they have espoused;
firmly reestablishing, on the morrow of that ordeal, the institutions of
an Administrative Order which had been temporarily disrupted and suffered
an eclipse during the years of repression, suffering and confusion;
embarking, at a later period, and in concert with Baha'i communities the
world over, on the Ten-Year Plan, designed to carry them a stage further
on the road leading them to their high destiny--the members of these
communities are now, both individually and collectively, fully engaged in
the discharge of their sacred and heavy responsibilities--responsibilities
which they cannot shirk and which I feel confident, they will nobly and
fully discharge.

The third phase of the Plan which they now have entered must witness such
an acceleration in the tempo of Baha'i activity, in the various fields
assigned to them, and such a depth of consecration to the tasks they have
shouldered, as shall throw into shade every evidence of the valour
displayed during the infancy of the Faith in both of these countries.

The virgin territories alloted to your assembly, under the Ten-Year Plan,
must be carefully watched over, and the prizes won in those fields must be
constantly enriched, at whatever cost, through the dispatch of a larger
number of pioneers and a more adequate provision for the needs, both
material and spiritual, of those valiant souls who, by the very nature of
their services, constitute the vanguard of the future army of Baha'u'llah
which must, in the days to come be raised up in those territories. The
homefront, the reservoir which must be constantly replenished if the aid
given to these pioneers is to prove ultimately adequate and effective,
must be made t