It is to you, dearly beloved friends of the West, who are the standard-bearers of the emancipation and triumph of the Bahá’í Faith, that our afflicted brethren of the East have turned their expectant eyes, confident that the day cannot be far-distant when, in accordance with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explicit utterance, the West will “seize the Cause” from Persia’s fettered hands and lead it to glorious victory. Though grief-stricken and horrified at this cruel blow, let us be on our guard lest we give way to despair, lest we forget that in the Almighty’s inscrutable wisdom this sudden calamity may prove to be but a blessing in disguise. For what else can it do but to stir the inmost depths of our souls, set our faith ablaze, galvanize our efforts, dissolve our differences, and provide one of the chief instruments which the unhampered promoters of the Faith can utilize to attract the attention, enlist the sympathy, and eventually win the allegiance of all mankind? Ours is this supreme opportunity; may we fulfill our trust. Your true brother, SHOGHI. Haifa, Palestine, April 22nd, 1926. Letter of May 11th, 1926. To the members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. Fellow-laborers in the Vineyard of God: Various happenings of recent months, highly disquieting in their suddenness, their complexity and consequences, have time and again, to my regret, compelled me to defer correspondence with you, my highly valued co-workers, who are destined to share no small a part of the burden that now weighs so heavily upon me. The prolonged and delicate negotiations arising out of the critical situation of Bahá’u’lláh’s house in Ba_gh_dád; the shameful recrudescence of unrestrained barbarism in stricken Persia; the unexpected reverse recently sustained in our legal transactions for the deliverance of Bahá’u’lláh’s mansion at Bahjí from the hands of the enemy; the unprecedented increase in the volume of work resulting from the rise and expansion of the Movement in various parts of the world—these and other issues, no less pressing in their demand upon my time and energy, have gradually affected my health and impaired the efficiency required in the discharge of my arduous duties. But, though body and mind be sorely strained by cares and perplexities which a Movement such as ours just emerging from obscurity must needs encounter, yet the spirit continues to draw fresh inspiration from the manner in which the chosen deliverers of the Faith in the Western world, and particularly in the American continent, are proving themselves increasingly worthy of such a stupendous yet so noble a task. Persecutions in Jahrum