O ye esteemed ones who are pioneers among the well-wishers of the world of humanity!... At present Universal Peace is a matter of great importance, but unity of conscience is essential, so that the foundation of this matter may become secure, its establishment firm and its edifice strong.... Today nothing but the power of the Word of God which encompasses the realities of things can bring the thoughts, the minds, the hearts and the spirits under the shade of one Tree. He is the potent in all things, the vivifier of souls, the preserver and the controller of the world of mankind.(132) Beyond this, the list of influential persons with whom the Master spent patient hours in both North America and Europe—particularly individuals struggling to promote the goal of world peace and humanitarianism—reflects His awareness of the responsibility the Cause has to humanity at large. As the extraordinary response evoked by His passing testifies, He pursued this course to the end of His life. Shoghi Effendi took up this legacy almost immediately upon beginning his ministry. As early as 1925, he encouraged the interest of an American believer, Jean Stannard, to establish an “International Bahá’í Bureau”, directing her to Geneva, seat of the League of Nations. While the Bureau exercised no administrative authority, it acted, in the Guardian’s words, “as intermediary between Haifa and other Bahá’í centers” and served as an information “distributing center” in the heart of Europe, its role being formally recognized when the League’s publishing house solicited and published an account of the Bureau’s activities.(133) As has so often been the case in the history of the Cause, an unexpected crisis served to greatly advance Bahá’í involvement with the larger society at the international level. In 1928, Shoghi Effendi encouraged the Spiritual Assembly of Baghdad to appeal to the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission against the seizure, by _Sh_í‘ih opponents, of Bahá’u’lláh’s House in that city. Recognizing the wrong that had been done, the Council of the League unanimously called on the British mandate authority, in March 1929, to press the Iraqi government “with a view to the immediate redress of the injustice suffered by the Petitioners”. Repeated evasions by the Iraqi government, including the violation of a solemn pledge on the part of the monarch himself, resulted in the case dragging on for years through successive sessions of the Mandates Commission, leaving the House in the hands of those who had seized it, a situation that remains to this day uncorrected.(134) Undeterred by this failure, Shoghi Effendi focused the attention of the Bahá’í community on the historic benefit that the campaign had won for the Cause. As had earlier been the case with the Sunni Muslim court’s rejection of the appeal of an Egyptian Bahá’í community regarding marriage, the Guardian pointed out: