IF LESS EXPENSIVE NOT AVAILABLE APPROVE. SHOGHI Letter of 21 July 1953 21 July 1953 To the Hands of the Cause, the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies, the pioneers, the resident believers and visitors attending the European Intercontinental Teaching Conference in Stockholm, Sweden (July 21/26, 1953). Well-beloved Friends, With a glad and grateful heart I welcome the convocation, in the capital city of Sweden, of the third of a series of Intercontinental Teaching Conferences associated with the world-wide festivities commemorating the Centenary of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh and destined to exert a profound and lasting influence on the immediate fortunes of His Faith in all continents of the globe. I look back with feelings of wonder, thankfulness and joy upon the chain of memorable circumstances which, a little over a century ago, accompanied the introduction of the Faith into, and marked the inception of its nascent institutions within a continent which, in the course of the last two thousand years, has exercised on the destiny of the human race a pervasive influence unequalled by that of any other continent of the globe. I feel impelled on this historic occasion, when the members of the American, the British, the German and the newly formed Italo-Swiss National Spiritual Assemblies, as well as representatives of the Bahá’ís of the United Kingdom, of Eire, of Germany, of Austria, of the Scandinavian and Benelux countries, of the Iberian Peninsula, of Italy, of Switzerland, of France and of Finland are assembled, to pay a warm tribute to the valiant labours of the early British and French Bahá’í pioneers, who at the very dawn of the Faith in Europe, strove with such diligence, consecration and resolution to fan into flame that holy Fire which the hand of the appointed Centre of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant had kindled in the north-west extremity of that continent on the morrow of His Father’s ascension. I recall the slow eastward spread of that infant Light which led to the gradual emergence of the German and Austrian Bahá’í communities, during the darkest period of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s incarceration in the prison-fortress of Akká. I am reminded of His subsequent epoch-making visit, soon after His providential release from His forty-year confinement in the Most Great Prison, to these newly-fledged struggling communities, of His patient seed-sowing destined to yield at a later age its first fruits, and constituting a landmark of the utmost significance in the rise and establishment of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in that continent.