I urge the entire Bahá’í community of the Western Hemisphere to focus its attention during the remaining months of the opening year of the second century on the formation of local Assemblies in the remaining Republics of Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia and San Domingo, guard against dissolution of Assemblies already painstakingly established throughout the Americas, exert effort on further multiplication of groups, wider dissemination of literature, greater use of radio, closer contact with masses, more audacious proclamation of the Faith, more effective coordination of local and national activities aiming at fuller demonstration of the rights and claims of the Faith to be regarded as sole refuge of humanity in its hour of bitterest agony. The American believers’ meritorious activities, individual, local, interstate, intercontinental, will be the object of my special prayers during the approaching Anniversary of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Ascension. Cablegram November 21, 1944 THE SUCCEEDING STAGE IN THE EVOLUTION OF THEIR WORLD MISSION 1944, a year memorable for the sharp contrast between the rising tide of spiritual victories culminating in the Centenary celebrations of a world-embracing Faith and the swiftly ebbing fortunes of a war-ravaged, disillusioned and bankrupt society, is drawing to a close. In every continent of the globe; in the Holy Land, the Heart and Center of our Faith and Pivot of its institutions; in the land of its birth; in the adjoining territory of ‘Iráq; throughout the Western Hemisphere; in the British Isles, so severely subjected to the violence of a world tempest; throughout the length and breadth of India; in far-off Australasia and in the Nile Valley—all with the sole exception of the distant Republics of the West subjected in varying degrees to the imminent danger of becoming the theatre of war—the communities laboring for the promotion of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh have, throughout five tumultuous years, been providentially spared to hold aloft its banner, to preserve its integrity, to maintain the continuity of its institutions, to enrich its annals, to consolidate its structure, to further disseminate its literature and to befittingly celebrate its Centenary. Preponderant indeed has been the share of that privileged community, which has been invested by the Pen of the Center of the Covenant with a world-wide mission, in the prosecution of a task which, ever since the onset of this world upheaval and despite its mounting horrors, the builders of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh have so unflaggingly pursued. Neither the participation of the Great Republic of the West in this fierce contest, nor the sorrows, burdens and restrictions which such direct association with the agonies of a travailing age has entailed, have thus far been capable of dimming the splendor of the exploits that have immortalized the record of the services of this community since the ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.