Present world chaos, exhibiting the impetuosity, follies, rebelliousness characteristic of humanity’s adolescent stage of development, and harbinger of the long-promised Golden Age of the maturity of the human race, is relentlessly spreading and distressingly intensified. The alternating victories and reverses, heralding parallel transition of proscribed Cause of Bahá’u’lláh struggling towards emancipation, world recognition and spiritual universal dominion, are simultaneously multiplying. The recrudescence of the chronic persecution afflicting the cradle of the Faith, the grave danger threatening the appropriated Temple and disbanded centers in Turkistan and Caucasus, the repressive measures successively choking the life and paralyzing the action of both the long-standing and the newly-fledged communities of Central, Western and South-Eastern Europe, the intermittent outbursts of religious fanaticism directed against the North African Assemblies, and the aggravation of the situation at the world Spiritual and Administrative Center, contrast with, and are outweighed by, the surging spirit, the startling expansion, the sweeping conquests, the superb consolidation of the swiftly-accumulating resources of the one remaining community singled out for the proclamation of the Administrative Order throughout the length and breadth of the Western Hemisphere. I appeal to the New World champions of the New World Order of Bahá’u’lláh to stand fast at this tragic hour in the fortunes of mankind and the challenging state of the evolution of the Faith. I beg them to close their ranks jointly, severally and vow themselves to incomparably sublime task whose operation must hasten the ascendancy of the beloved Cause and the spiritual redemption of a reconstructed mankind. Cablegram October 29, 1940 TORCHBEARER OF WORLD CIVILIZATION My heart is thrilled with delight as I witness, in so many fields, and in such distant outposts, and despite such formidable difficulties, restrictions, obstacles and dangers, so many evidences of the solidarity, the valor, and the achievements of the American Bahá’í community. As the end of the First Century of the Bahá’í Era approaches, as the shadows descending upon and enveloping mankind steadily and remorselessly deepen, this community, which can almost be regarded as the solitary champion of the Faith in the Western World, is increasingly evincing and demonstrating its capacity, its worth, and ability as the torchbearer of the New, the World Civilization which is destined to supplant in the fulness of time the present one. And more particularly in the virgin and far-flung territories of Latin America, it has in recent months, abundantly given visible evidence of its merits and competence to shoulder the immense responsibilities which the carrying of the sacred Fire to all the Republics of the Western Hemisphere must necessarily entail.