Happy to convey to assembled friends at epoch-making conference the news of the magnificent response by Bahá'í communities in the East and in the West, during the course of the less than three-month interval separating the second and third Intercontinental Conferences of this Holy Year, to the call to arise and befittingly inaugurate the opening phase of the World Crusade. The number of the pioneers, whether white or colored, young or old, on all continents who volunteered for service in both virgin and open territories is past the two hundred mark, including three offers for the leper colonies. Ruanda-Urundi, Samoan Islands, Daman, Southern Rhodesia, Goa, Kodiak Island and Italian Somaliland are already opened.
The settlement of French Equatorial Africa, Solomon Islands, Queen Charlotte Islands, South West Africa, Cape Verde Islands, Togoland, Mauritius, Reunion Island, St. Helena Island, St. Thomas Island, Channel Islands, Aleutian Islands, Azores, Key West, Cook Islands, Monaco, Balearic Islands, Malta, Cyprus, Hebrides Islands, Northern Territories Protectorate, Seychelles, Andorra, Canary Islands and French Somaliland is virtually assured. The northern outposts of the Faith in the Western Hemisphere have been pushed as far as Arctic Bay, Franklin, seventy-three degrees north latitude, and in Europe as far as the Lofoten Islands. A pioneer is en route to Fezzan, Libya, chosen scene of `Abdu'l-Bahá's banishment by `Abdu'l-Hamid.
All the areas within the Western Hemisphere allocated to the United States National Assembly are assigned. A third of the membership of that same Assembly is joining the ranks of the pioneers. The remaining sister national assemblies are now vying in a spiritual race to complete assignments in their respective continents. Funds are inaugurated and sites are being investigated for the purchase of land for the Mashriqu'l-Adhkars of Rome, Panama City and Toronto and for a national Haziratu'l-Quds in London. I appeal to the attendants at this conference, in thanksgiving for the manifold blessings abundantly showered upon Bahá'u'lláh's crusaders, to immortalize their proceedings through the inauguration of funds for the purchase of sites for Temples in that northern city, the scene of the present conference, and in Frankfurt in the heart of the European continent. I am contributing two thousand pounds for the furtherance of these meritorious enterprises.
I urge, moreover, that the participants, in view of the disproportionately small number of pioneers destined for virgin territories in relation to the total of volunteers, swell the roll of honor through enlisting promptly under the unfurled banner of the advancing hosts of Bahá'u'lláh. No worthier contribution can be offered on the altar of Bahá'í sacrifice, no greater honor won during the course of the Holy Year now swiftly drawing to its close.
[July 1953]