The gravity of the emergency facing the North American believers is unprecedented since the initiation of the Divine Plan and unparalleled in the history of the American Bahá'í Community since `Abdu'l-Bahá's passing. No obstacle is insuperable, no sacrifice too great for attainment of supremely important objective. The eyes of her sister communities in every continent of the globe and of her daughter communities of Latin America, handicapped by a variety of adverse circumstances, are fixed upon the community of followers of Bahá'u'lláh in North American continent who are enjoying the blessings of internal peace, adequate resources, administrative experience and organizing ability for their divinely appointed mission, expecting them to arise and avert the reverse which would mar the splendor of their record of unexampled stewardship. I am moved to plead, at this eleventh hour, that the rank and file of the community, particularly the members resident in long-established leading strongholds of the Faith--New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington --issue forth unhesitatingly, determinedly, sacrifice every interest, assume positions in the forefront of the struggle and emulate in the course of the first decade of second Bahá'í century, opening years of the second epoch of Formative Age of the Faith, exploits of their spiritual progenitors, the dawn-breakers of the Heroic Age, which immortalized the dawn of the first Bahá'í century. The immediate fortunes of the Plan are precariously hanging in the balance. The three months' interval is swiftly running out. My heart aches at contemplation of the possibility of failure of the stalwart community to rise to the heights of the occasion. I refuse to believe that its members, invested with unique apostolic mission of `Abdu'l-Bahá, will shrink from meeting the most challenging requirement of the present hour.
[February 1, 1948]