Dear and valued co-workers: The entry of the United States of America
into the war invest it with the character of a truly world-embracing crisis,
designed to release world-shaking, world-shaping forces, which, as they
operate, and mount in intensity, will throw down the barriers that hinder the
emergence of that world community which the World Religion of Bahá'u'lláh
has anticipated and can alone permanently establish. It marks a milestone
on the road which must lead the peoples of the North American continent
to the glorious destiny that awaits them. It confronts the American
Bahá'í community, already so well advanced in the prosecution of their
Seven Year Plan, with a challenge at once severe and inescapable. The
exterior ornamentation of their consecrated Edifice has been providentially
expedited to a point where its completion is now assured. The intercontinental
and national teaching campaigns, that constitute the second and even
more vital aspect of that plan, though progressing magnificently in the
States, in Canada and throughout Latin America, are still far from having
attained their consummation. The obstacles which the extension of the
war to the Western Hemisphere has raised are, I am well aware, manifold
and formidable. The heroic self-sacrifice exhibited by the North American
Bahá'í community will, I am confident, surmount them. The Hand of
Omnipotence, which has led so mighty a member of the human race to
plunge into the turmoil of world disaster, that has provided thereby the
means for the effective and decisive participation of so promising a nation
in the immediate trials and the future reconstruction of human society, will
not and cannot allow those who are directly, consciously and worthily promoting
the highest interests of their nation and of the world, to fall short
of the accomplishment of their God-given task. He will, more than ever
before in their history, pour out His blessings upon them, if they refuse to
allow the present circumstances, grievous though they are, to interfere with
the full and uninterrupted execution of this initial undertaking in pursuance
of their world mission. The coming two years must witness, fraught
as they may well be with the greatest ordeal afflicting their countrymen, a
manifestation of spiritual vitality and an output of heroic action,
commensurate with the gravity and afflictions of the present hour, and worthy
of the concluding years of the first Bahá'í century.
January 15, 1942