To the dearly-beloved friends throughout Germany. Care of the National Spiritual Assembly
My well-beloved friends:
What a joy to correspond with you again, and express, after a long and unbroken silence, my warm sentiments of love and affection for those tried, yet steadfast, lovers of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá! Your trials and sufferings have been a constant source of anxiety and painful sorrow, not to me alone, but to the Ladies of the Household as well as to the friends at large.
True, humanity is to-day widely afflicted with unprecedented ills and calamities, but you, the chosen and favoured children of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, have, by some wisdom inscrutable to us all, received the fullest measure of this distress, and are carrying the burden of your cares with heroic fortitude, unflinching faith, and undaunted courage worthy of the admiration of even the most severely tried of your fellow-sufferers in far-away Persia.
Your only consolation lies in the ever-living words of our departed Master, who confidently declared that the days are not far distant when Germany, will shake off her present humiliation, and will emerge, mighty, united and glorious, not only to take her destined place in the councils of nations, but to raise high the triumphant banner of the Cause in the very heart of Europe.
Your ceaseless activities since His departure from our midst have been steadily extended as your tribulations and anxieties have multiplied, and I feel hopeful that ere long the true Faith of God will blaze worth in that land, and will herald publicly the Message of Salvation to that distracted continent.
I am so desirous to receive from the National Spiritual Assembly, frequent, comprehensive and up-to-date reports on the present position of the Cause throughout Germany, with an account of the activities of the various Bahá’í centers recently established throughout that land.
Your Bahá’í Magazine, I have regularly received and read with deep interest. I strongly urge you to devote a section of it, written both in German and English, to an account of the current activities of the Movement throughout the length and breadth of Germany, a step which I am sure will rejoice the hearts of our spiritual brethren and sisters the world over.
The members of the holy Family and myself have joined lately the resident friends in the Holy Land in contributing towards the relief of the present distress in Germany, and we trust our modest efforts will mitigate to some extent the rigours of this coming winter in that afflicted country.
Hoping to hear from you, individually and collectively, and remembering you always in my prayers,
I am your brother and co-worker,
(Shoghi Effendi, The Light of Divine Guidance, Vol. 1, pp. 14-15)
