Ministry of the Custodians:

Devotedly, In service to the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh,

The body of the Hands of the Cause taken in Bahji at their first Conclave in 1957. (Amatu'l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum and Clara Dunn present but not shown.)

PLENARY MEETING OF THE HANDS OF THE CAUSE, APRIL 1963

On the steps of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's home: (seated) Musa Banani; first row, left to right: Leroy Ioas, Tarazu'llah Samandari, Agnes Alexander, Amatu'l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum, Enoch Olinga, Jalal Khazeh; second row, left to right: Dhikru'llah Khadem, behind him Collis Featherstone, Adelbert Muhlschlegel, Shu'a'u'llah 'Ala'i, Hermann Grossmann, Rahmatu'llah Muhajir, Abu'l-Qasim Faizi, John Robarts, 'Ali-Muhammad Varqa and 'Ali-Akbar Furutan; back row: Ugo Giachery, William Sears, Paul Haney, Hasan Balyuzi and John Ferraby.

THE MINISTRY OF THE CUSTODIANS 1957-1963

An Account of the Stewardship of the Hands of the Cause

With an Introduction
by
THE HAND OF THE CAUSE
'AMATU'L-BAHÁ RÚHÍYYIH KHÁNUM

BAHA'I WORLD CENTRE
HAIFA

(c) 1992 THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

ISBN 0-85398-350-X

A Cataloguing-in-Publication number is available
from the British Library

Printed in Great Britain

The texts of these messages, however vital, could never reflect our concern for the maintenance of the hard-won victories our beloved Guardian had achieved during his thirty-six years of unremitting labour, ending his life at 60, far too early an age for these days.

We Hands, particularly those who were acting as Custodians in the Holy Land, passed through perilous shoals indeed as we guided the precious barque of our Faith on its way through the violent flood of events that followed upon the loss of our hereditary Guardian. The Hands were widely scattered across the world and communication in those days was almost exclusively confined to air mail and cables. With exception of the women Hands, who through age or circumstances were not employed, almost all the men were earning their living and in no position to cease doing so. We all felt that neither our teachings-which preclude a special class of paid religious clergy-nor our limited resources and our tremendous financial obligations could justify the body of the Hands' beginning to live on the Bahá'í Fund; those who were chosen to act at the World

It was not the power of our intellect nor our personal capacities which carried us through that period, but the love and loyalty of our hearts for Shoghi Effendi the depth of our devotion to the Faith we believed in, and the divine guidance, inspiration, and protection which were undoubtedly vouchsafed to us-else how could we, all over the world, have held the scattered and diversified community of Bahá'u'lláh together, and victoriously won our Guardian's Crusade, crowning it with the election of the Universal House of Justice? The leaders of neither Christianity nor Islam had succeeded in protecting those world religions from schism, but we protected ours from it. How? By the power vested in us, in the texts of our Scriptures; by our selfless devotion not only to a man who had died suddenly and left no direct guidance or instructions behind him, but also to the great international host of believers now left shepherdless, widely-scattered, remote and isolated, throughout the continents, seas, wildernesses and islands of the planet. So tightly knit was the unity among these followers of Bahá'u'lláh that they proved indivisible in heart, invincible in faith. Above all, we owed the power we were able to exert during this unique crisis to the web of tight, written texts of our teachings that, in spite of this supreme test, could not be violated and to which we held fast, sustaining both ourselves and the Bahá'ís down to the tiniest cell of this great living organism, the Cause of God. The vast fabric of our Faith was not without its own inner system of security: its local and national Bahá'í bodies constituted a world-wide administrative network, and was in the largest sense a legal entity. We had incorporated bodies all over the world, we had national and international funds of the Faith, we had fabulous real estate holdings at our World Centre. On the other hand, we had obligations that brooked no delay. We were like a man who is mortally ill but whose life depends on action. However grief-stricken and lost we were, we could not delay any action of any kind, for a moment. There was no time to pause, to contemplate, to savour our grief. For almost six years we ran, we met the challenges, problems, enemies-we ran.

After the election of the Universal House of Justice on April 21, 1963, when the Hands in the Holy Land returned from the World Congress to Haifa, we held constant meetings in the home of 'Abdu'l-Bahá with the newly-elected members of that Supreme Body to hand over to them the administrative affairs of the Faith. Files and information were turned over to them in a steady process of transfer from our interim, provisional

It is foolish to ask questions of history; it is even more foolish to ask questions of the Almighty. The Guardianship had ceased to exist as an ongoing institution. The Hands had gloriously crowned their function of protection of the Cause of God by calling for and supervising the election of the Universal House of Justice, the Supreme Body of the Bahá'í world; through the aegis of the Institution of the Counsellors, initiated and supported by that Supreme Body, the vital functions of propagation and protection will continue to be carried on. In 1973 the Hands of the Cause became a part of the International Teaching Centre and in this capacity, aside from specific meetings of their own with the Universal House of Justice, both as individual Hands and as a body, hold regular joint meetings with our Supreme Body.

APPOINTED BY BAHA'U'LLAH DURING HIS MINISTRY,¹ 1863-1892

OUTSTANDING BELIEVERS REFERRED TO BY 'ABDU'L-BAHÁ, AS HANDS OF THE CAUSE DURING HIS MINISTRY,¹ 1892-1921

APPOINTED POSTHUMOUSLY BY SHOGHI EFFENDI DURING HIS MINISTRY, 1921-1957

HANDS OF THE CAUSE APPOINTED BY SHOGHI EFFENDI

INDIVIDUAL APPOINTMENTS BY SHOGHI EFFENDI

The words of the Universal House of Justice, the Supreme Body of the Bahá'í Faith, in its first message to the Bahá'ís of the world, dated April 30, 1963, at the time of the World Congress in London, are the best tribute to our role in history: "We do not wish to dwell on the appalling dangers which faced the infant Cause when it was suddenly deprived of our beloved Shoghi Effendi but rather to acknowledge with all the love and gratitude of our hearts the reality of the sacrifice, the labour, the self-discipline, the superb stewardship of the Hands of the Cause of God. We can think of no more fitting words to express our tribute to these dearly loved and valiant souls than to recall the words of Bahá'u'lláh Himself: 'Light and glory, greeting and praise be upon the Hands of His Cause, through whom the light of long-suffering hath shone forth, and the declaration of authority is proven of God, the Powerful, the Mighty, the Independent; and through whom the sea of bestowal hath moved, and the breeze of the favour of God, the Lord of mankind, hath wafted."'

To this unique testimony should be added the. fact that although the Hands were firmly established as the ruling and guiding body of the entire Bahá'í world, I can bear witness that never for a single instant were the Hands influenced by either ambition or self-esteem. Our sole objective, the purpose of our every effort, was to succeed in electing in 1963 the Universal House of Justice. The Universal House of Justice itself testified that: "The entire history of religion shows no comparable record of such strict self-discipline, such absolute loyalty, and such complete self-abnegation by the leaders of a religion finding themselves suddenly deprived of their divinely inspired guide. The debt of gratitude which mankind for generations, nay, ages to come, owes to this handful of grief-stricken, steadfast, heroic souls is beyond estimation."

Although Bahá'u'lláh created the Institution of the Hands, appointing during His own lifetime four distinguished Persian believers to fulfil this function, and His son and successor, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, later referred to four more outstanding Persian followers of His Father as Hands, it remained for Shoghi Effendi-according to the explicit text of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament the Hands may only be appointed by the Guardian himself-to add forty-two more names to this unique list of people heading the appointive half of Bahá'u'lláh's World Order, thus raising the total to

From 1951 to 1957 Shoghi Effendi constantly supervised and guided the Institution of the Hands, that half of the institutions of the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh which has the specialized function to both propagate and protect it. Like a wise gardener, tending and pruning a rare, promising and cherished fruit tree, he watched over us as we Hands served him at the World Centre and in the five continents of the globe. It was he who developed the second phase of our activities through adding, in April 1954, to the powers of our Institution by authorizing us to appoint Auxiliary Boards. Looking back, I believe this constant care and encouragement he gave us succeeded in creating among us not only a sense of passionate loyalty and devotion to him, but a sense of belonging, as a group, to the Institution of the Guardianship.

I would never claim that my impressions are a reflection of Shoghi Effendi's motives; anyone who ever pretends to really understand the Centre of the Covenant-be it Bahá'u'lláh, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, or Shoghi Effendi-immediately presumes equality, which is of course out of the question and utterly ridiculous. However, as a close observer, one has a right to one's opinions. I believe, in choosing those he elevated to the rank of Hand during their lifetime, Shoghi Effendi was primarily influenced by their already demonstrated devotion and capacity to serve the Faith, or the indications he saw in them of a great potential capacity to do so. In rare cases, such as Corinne True, or "Mother" Dunn, it was, I think, a well-deserved crown of reward placed upon their heads for a singularly long and distinguished period of service. The Guardian was certainly not influenced for a moment by what the opinion of the Bahá'ís might be of his choice. He was equally uninfluenced by how we might personally feel; three of us were appointed to our face, so to speak: I was present when he told Fred Schopflocher at the Pilgrim House table that he was making him a Hand; Freddie turned so white I thought he was going to faint! He told Musa Banani; likewise on his pilgrimage, that he was appointing him a Hand; Mr. Banani; begged not to be! I was not present but I heard this. And he told me, after my father died, that he was appointing me a Hand in his place; all my tears and remonstrances and begging him not to had no effect. Shoghi Effendi was singularly uninfluenceable.

Of the thirty-two Hands he appointed during their lifetime the geographic distribution was as follows: Holy Land 4, Asia 10, America 6, Europe 6, Africa 4, Australasia 2; sometimes he associated these appointments with a continental distribution. The final eight Hands-whose names were announced a month before he died and who, with the other nineteen still living Hands, were suddenly obliged to assume the leadership of the Cause of God pending the time when the Universal House of Justice could be elected on a firm basis-were characterized in surprising and significant terms: he said they had been chosen from four continents of the globe and represented not only the black and white races but were of Afnan,1 Christian, Muslim, Jewish and pagan backgrounds. Surely this was a most phenomenal statement, to bring up Enoch Olinga's "pagan" background, considering that his immediate ancestors had been Christians. It certainly emphasized the total lack of any form of prejudice within the Bahá'í Faith; I am sure, however, that the Guardian made Enoch's appointment, like all the other appointments of Hands, on the sole basis of individual merit. I think, moreover, the fact that Enoch was a black African, from a continent which in many cases still had a pagan

Whatever the reason for Shoghi Effendi's choice of Hands, he once said to me that these were the best he had to choose from; I got the impression he wished he had better. Knowing myself, and my fellow Hands, I am sure all of us lamented in our hearts that we were not worthier, had not more capacity in every way to serve him. Before he died Shoghi Effendi had succeeded in making us feel we were a body to assist him, a world-wide, developing Institution, with an integral and essential part to play in promoting the growth and expansion of our Faith. We were wholly his creation.

The Guardian, in a cable to the Bahá'í world dated January 9, 1951, had proclaimed his "weighty epoch-making decision" to form the first International Bahá'í Council, the "forerunner" of the "supreme administrative institution"' of the Faith, which was destined to emerge in the fullness of time, and he characterized this "historic decision" as "Marking most significant milestone evolution Administrative Order Faith Bahá'u'lláh course last thirty years." Those thirty years were his own ministry since the passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 1921. This first International Bahá'í Council was not elected but selected by Shoghi Effendi himself from individual believers of long standing and proven dedication to the service of the Cause. Less than one year later, on December 24, 1951, he announced the names of the first contingent of Hands. In view of the clear distinction in the Teachings between the elected Universal House of Justice and the appointed Hands of the Cause, it seems to me portentous that the first membership of the International Bahá'í Council included three people soon to be nominated Hands, and that, at the time of the beloved Guardian's passing, five of its officers, so designated by him, namely, myself as liaison between it and him, Mason Remey, its President, Amelia Collins, its Vice-President, Leroy Ioas its Secretary General, and Ugo Giachery, its Member at Large-who lived in Italy and functioned as a European Hand, but frequently visited Haifa at Shoghi Effendi's request-were all Hands of the Cause. In addition to being members of the International Bahá'í Council, these Hands, resident and serving at the World Centre, constituted a separate body, specified by Shoghi Effendi to act as liaison between him and the other Hands throughout the world, conveying their messages to him and his to them,

Historic and stirring events moved rapidly during those last years of the Guardianship: on June 30, 1952, Shoghi Effendi wrote of the Faith that "at long last the machinery of its highest institutions has been erected," and that around its most holy Shrines "the supreme organs of its unfolding Order, are, in their embryonic form, unfolding . . ." Block by block he had been laying the foundations of the future World Commonwealth of Bahá'u'lláh in what he termed the "heart and nerve-centre" of the Faith situated in the Holy Land. By April 1954, two years and four months after his first announcement of the appointment of Hands of the Cause, he was able, in a cable addressed to them and to the Bahá'í world, to state how greatly he valued the support of their members at the World Centre, citing five particular fields of service that he considered outstanding: the erection of the superstructure of the Bab's Shrine on Mount Carmel; the reinforcement of the World Centre's ties with the new State; the extension of international endowments in the Holy Land; and, in his own words, the "initiation preliminary measures establishment Bahá'í World Administrative Centre"; to this grandiose picture of our support of his work he added our participation in the four successive Intercontinental Teaching Conferences held at the inception of his World Crusade.

In this same message an immense step forward took place in the world-wide function of the Hands-now nineteen in number-four in the Holy Land and fifteen in the various continents, namely, six in Asia, one in Africa, four in Europe, one in Australasia and three in the Americas through the Guardian's instructions that these continental Hands should appoint Auxiliary Boards, of nine members each, to assist them in their continental areas. He also specified that in addition to acting as deputies of the Hands in their respective continents, they would "aid and advise them in the effective prosecution of the Ten Year Plan" and that, at a later period, they would assist "in the discharge of their dual and sacred task of safeguarding the Faith and of promoting its teaching activities." In October 1957 Shoghi Effendi implemented this duty to safeguard the Faith, shortly before his passing, by creating an additional Auxiliary Board, whose function was to be, under the direct guidance of the Hands of the Cause, "watching over the security of the Faith". He had already stated, only five months before he passed away, in a general communication

The temporary headship of the Bahá'í Faith by the Hands of the Cause appointed by Shoghi Effendi commenced with his wholly unexpected and sudden passing through a heart attack in London, England, on November 4, 1957, after he had fully recovered from Asiatic flu, an event which shook the Bahá'í world to its roots. I sent a cable as follows, via Haifa (our usual practice), on that same day, which announced, from the World Centre, his passing:

RUHIYYIH

Once this official and tragic announcement had gone forth from the World Centre, subsequent messages perforce were sent direct from London. On November 5th another cable went out to all National Spiritual Assemblies:

RUHIYYIH

This terrible news evoked throughout the Bahá'í world a passionate wave of response; cables and letters expressing the shock and sorrow of the believers and their firm loyalty to the Hands poured in after his passing.

Eighteen Hands of the Cause assembled in London to attend the funeral of their Guardian. Those who were unable to be present were either too old and frail to do so, or, in some cases, were requested to remain at their posts for the protection of the Faith at this moment of great crisis.

The following cables were sent on two successive days after the funeral, held on November 9th in the Great Northern London Cemetery:

RUHIYYIH

RUHIYYIH

The labours of the Hands of the Cause at the time of this unique crisis followed an unbroken pattern till the day the Universal House of Justice was elected on April 21, 1963. The Hands who had gathered in London met and, in spite of their shock and grief, decided not an instant's time must be lost in holding a plenary meeting of our entire body at our World Centre in the Holy Land. This was called for November 18th. Our first act was to choose a delegation to open the apartment of Shoghi Effendi which had been sealed by the International Bahá'í Council right after his passing (in addition to being locked by him when we left Haifa, as was his usual custom) and to make an exhaustive search for any document he might have left-a Will or otherwise. There was no such thing to be found.

The general body of the Hands then met in the upper hall of the

When one adds to the staggering total of the above enumerated problems the fact that all this rested on the shoulders of twenty-seven Hands, the first of whom had only been called to their high office six years previously and the last of whom were appointed a bare four weeks before Shoghi Effendi passed away, one gets some idea of the state and the burden of the Hands of the Cause of God.

As we sat in the great upstairs hall of the Mansion-so sacred, so private-our historic Proclamation was worked out; it was signed by all the Hands of the Cause except Corinne True, then aged 96, who was unable to travel from the United States to the Holy Land but quite capable of being one of the signatories by consent of that historic document. Clara Dunn, 88, was, however, present in Haifa and signed the document herself, but because of age and infirmity was not able to attend our meetings. When one remembers that of the twenty-five of us gathered in the Mansion, most of our Persian Hands spoke little or no English at this time and none of the Western Hands spoke any Persian except myself-and my vocabulary in no way covered the issues facing us-and that only two of the Persian Hands were completely bilingual and therefore we had to translate every word, back and forth-as each Hand, conscious of the frightening responsibilities resting upon us, insisted on exact translation of the opinions voiced in the other language not his own-and that this

At this first Conclave we were faced with the inescapable obligation of voting from amongst the membership of the Hands of the Cause for who would, if chosen by all of us, accept to live and serve at the World Centre as one of the nine legal Custodians. For those who were not already part of the body of the Hands in Haifa this meant literally burning all their bridges behind them. I can remember the words of Paul Haney, an economist just promoted in the prominent investment firm to which he had belonged for some years, with the assurance of financial increases and a substantial pension on retirement, as he bowed his head and said, "You are only called once."

We had, from our very first Conclave, a fixed procedure: every morning we went to pray in the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh before our meetings started and our last act every evening was to visit the room in which He passed away for closing prayers. If my memory serves me, the longest Conclave lasted twenty-two days-all the days being the same. We were not interested in days off!

A policy was established that no notes of individual Hands would be taken out of that hall, but would be gathered and burned at the end of the day by one of the Hands. As our consultations were full, free and frank, the notes-in discussions involving more than twenty people, where each one had to wait his turn-were obviously far too pertinent to risk individual opinions leaving that room. Any carelessness, any gossip or speculation at such a juncture could have divided the Hands from each other and split the Bahá'í Faith.

After long and often agonizing consultation and soul-searching which took place in discussion at more than one Conclave-we finally agreed as a body to announce to the Bahá'í world that the Institution of the Hands, different in both nature and function from the structure constituting the elected administrative bodies of the Faith, placed us in a separate category and we requested the believers not to vote for the Hands of the Cause in Bahá'í elections. We Hands burned in the fire of this weighty decision until it became clear to us that greater strength, diversity, and breadth lay in keeping these two aspects of the system of Bahá'u'lláh separate and therefore more mobile, each free to function in its own field.

When the Guardian passed away the paramount, supremely urgent task confronting us at our first Conclave was to ensure that everything connected with the affairs, direction and administration of the Faith was solidly and speedily vested in the Institution of the Hands. We were blessed in the unity and strength we found among ourselves-some of the

All the legal powers at the World Centre of the Faith-which had been vested in Shoghi Effendi as the appointed successor of 'Abdu'l-Bahá -- were left in limbo when he passed away as he himself had made neither a Will nor a statement of his intentions. The holdings at the World Centre, including its sacred Shrines, its historic buildings, hundreds of square metres of prime real estate, and substantial local bank accounts, were therefore in great danger. The Hands were able, however, to successfully and legally establish the principle that the Guardian held all properties as the Head of the Faith and not as an individual, and to have this priceless heritage safely placed in the hands of the Custodians. A further large deposit, invested for safekeeping in Switzerland in both his and my name, I later turned over to the Universal House of Justice after its election. I remember remonstrating with Shoghi Effendi when he made this arrangement, that it was unnecessary to include my name on this account; but when he passed away so suddenly in London I was in a position, with grace and dignity, to draw on this money to pay for all his funeral expenses and our hotel bills and later to design and supervise the construction and erection of the monument, in white Carrara marble, marking his grave, without turning to any Bahá'í source for assistance. This was a great consolation to me in my sorrow and surely reflected the mercy of God in an hour of terrible trial and suffering.

Following the historic inaugural Conclave in Bahji from November 18th to the 25th, 1957, one of the first acts of the Custodians was to fulfil what had been a cherished plan of Shoghi Effendi himself, namely, to tear down the long, two-storey house occupied by a remnant of the Covenant-breakers, a building which abutted on the garden wall of the Mansion of Bahá'u'lláh in Bahji towards the north, the legal possession of which he had acquired, after years of effort, shortly before his passing. We accomplished this in December 1957 not only in a spirit of fidelity to his wishes, but, in our deep sorrow, longing to please him by fulfilling one of his last cherished plans for the beautification of the precincts of our Most Holy Shrine, the Qiblih of our Faith. As the clouds of dust arose from the demolition of this ugly building, in some strange way it assuaged our aching hearts. It was a revelation to me, when we extended the pattern of Shoghi Effendi's garden into the space the demolished building had occupied, to see how, within half a metre, the large symmetrical design of the existing gardens he had made was completed.

Indeed, in the years following his passing, in one field after another, one plan Shoghi Effendi had made after another, whether in connection with the Bahá'í properties in the Holy Land or throughout the world in detailed national plans and objectives, was fulfilled. This included the five large Intercontinental Conferences he announced would be held during 1958-the midway point of his decade-long global Spiritual Crusade. In spite of our heartbreak, the fidelity of the Hands was so great we each went to the Intercontinental Conference the Guardian had specified. He had sown and we reaped, and still do, his harvest.

In the meetings of the Custodians we almost never worked to an agenda and had no rigid format. We had decided, from the time of our first Conclave that, in order to protect the Cause of God, we would have no officers, such as President, Chairman, Secretary, etc. lest one of the male Hands, holding such a position, should begin to assume in the eyes of the Bahá'ís the function of the leader, and, God forbid, begin to be seen as a sort of second Guardian in importance. I think this was one of our wisest decisions and a great shield for the purity of our services. Likewise, in the Custodian's meetings we had no "head", but took the chairmanship in rotation. We did, however, divide our work in the sense that Persian Hands handled the correspondence in Persian and Arabic and those of us from the West, all correspondence in western languages.

In spite of all our devotion and sacrifices, one of our greatest problems was to ensure, all the year, every year, that a quorum of Hands was present in the Holy Land for our decisions. Within the first two years of our ministry two of the Custodians found they could not continue to serve in a permanent capacity at the World Centre, and in order to maintain our number at nine, it was necessary to select two other Hands to replace them. In November of 1959 the Hands announced that John Ferraby and Horace Holley-an immemorial figure in the development of the Administrative Order in America, which was the world prototype-had been chosen to serve as Custodians.

During the period of our ministry we were grieved by the death of four of our fellow-Hands, two of whom were Custodians. Only eight months after having been chosen as a Custodian, Horace Holley passed away, in July 1960; William Sears was called upon to serve as his replacement. On January 1, 1962, our dear Amelia Collins died and Hasan Balyuzi was appointed to act as a Custodian temporarily to fill the vacancy created by her passing.

If one is to understand how the Institution of the Hands achieved the preservation of the Faith between the passing of its hereditary Head and the election of its Supreme Body, one cannot do so without a clear picture of the stage of development at which the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh found itself

It is beyond the scope of this introduction to present all the goals of Shoghi Effendi's vast Ten Year Teaching and Consolidation Plan; 2 only the most arduous and costly tasks which faced the Hands will be mentioned. The Guardian, by the time of his passing, had either inaugurated, changed, or accomplished some of his own goals; a few, dependent on political situations, proved unfeasible. The monetary tasks alone which faced the Hands were formidable. Shoghi Effendi had called for the "doubling" of Bahá'í Houses of Worship. The "Mother Temple of the West", situated in the United States, near Chicago, whose cornerstone 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself had laid in 1912, the Guardian had, with the greatest difficulty, over a period of three decades-decades which included the "Great Depression" in the United States, which began in 1929 and

During the five years prior to Shoghi Effendi's passing it became evident there was no hope of building a Mashriqu'l-Adhkar in Persia as both the official and popular hatred of the Bahá'ís had not modified in over a century.¹ The Guardian, saddened and indignant, decided to compensate the steadfast, continuously oppressed and persecuted believers in that country by erecting not two but three Temples. He launched, in his own words, an "ambitious three-fold enterprise, designed to compensate for the disabilities suffered by the sorely-tried Community of the followers of His Faith in the land of His birth, aiming at the erection, in localities as far apart as Frankfurt, Sydney and Kampala, of the Mother Temples of the European, the Australian and African continents, at a cost of approximately one million dollars, complementing the Temples already constructed in the Asiatic and American continents. One-third of this sum 1, gladly and with a grateful heart, pledge at this auspicious hour, a sum which, when added to the funds already donated for this laudable purpose ... will constitute well-nigh half of the entire amount required to ensure the consummation of this stupendous, epoch-making undertaking."

The Guardian, before announcing these decisions, had privately calculated that about one-half of the cost he already had in hand or was assured of receiving; the remainder, so to speak, he trusted in God to provide. He gave them first the Mother Temple of Africa in its heart, Kampala, Uganda, and later, to everyone's joy and surprise, he added the Mother Temple of the Antipodes in Sydney, Australia, and finally, the last of those to be built, the Mother Temple of Europe in Frankfurt. Fortunately for the Hands, he had already advanced his plans for these three Temples by approving their designs. It was a great blessing for the Bahá'ís of the world that the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of Bahá'u'lláh's world-conquering spiritual army had announced and set in motion himself such momentous projects. But think of the agony of twenty-seven heart-broken Hands faced with the duty of fulfilling these commitments! The cornerstone of the African Temple in Kampala was laid on January 26, 1958; that of Sydney on March 22, 1958; and that of Frankfurt on November 20, 1960. Triumphantly the Custodians were able to see the first of these

It is, I think, impossible for others to understand how hard the Hands in the Holy Land daily worked, how much we struggled to raise the money for and to build these three large and imposing edifices for Shoghi Effendi Many times the diminishing number of Hands resident at the World Centre have said to each other: "We could not again pass through even five minutes of the suffering we went through in those years!"

One of our most pressing worries concerned the heavy financial obligations left us in the plans of Shoghi Effendi regarding not only the construction of Bahá'í Temples but other properties, and the monetary support we had to give to the new National Bahá'í Assemblies in developing countries. The national Bahá'í bodies in a position to provide any substantial aid at that period were those of Iran and America.

The main income of the Hands was from the contributions of the Persian Bahá'í community, which was the oldest and at that time the most affluent Bahá'í community in the world. This monetary aid we estimated at about $100,000 a year. In June 1960, as we considered our financial position, we felt obliged to vote this entire sum for Temple construction, the expenses of the Institution of the Hands and support to the National Assemblies, nearly all of which at that period were not self-supporting and received most of their annual budget from the Hands at the World Centre.

The munificent financial contributions of our fellow-Hand and Custodian Amelia Collins were of great assistance to the Hands; her outstanding generosity afforded infinite comfort to our heavily-burdened minds and hearts as we faced the ever-increasing financial needs of the Faith. The following minute from our Conclave meeting in 1959 conveys only one instance of her magnanimous spirit: "Milly offered to provide one-third entire sum to be given by Hands Holy Land to Hands in the continents."

The Hands living at the World Centre practised rigid economy; as the pilgrimage had been suspended for a nine-month period of mourning throughout the Bahá'í world after the passing of Shoghi Effendi our Eastern and Western Pilgrim Houses were available and the newly-chosen Custodians and their wives resided in them for some time, only moving to more suitable accommodation when the pilgrimage was reopened.

With very few exceptions, the Hands had all been, at some period, members of various National Spiritual Assemblies; they were highly informed and highly skilled Bahá'ís They not only had a right to hold individual opinions but did so very strongly. Like most consultative bodies, we got over the bumps, the exasperation at interminable waits for one's turn to speak, the long-windedness which our passionate sense of responsibility and the fact that most of us were public speakers, produced. But there was one agonizing issue we could not agree on. Year after year we could come to no conclusion about whether the Guardianship was closed for the period of this Faith. The death of Shoghi Effendi had really been like an arrow shot into our hearts. Each one struggled with his bereavement in his own way. One of us, Mason Remey, one of the oldest and most distinguished, solved his personal dilemma by concluding that the Bahá'í Faith could not go on without a Guardian and that undoubtedly Shoghi Effendi's successor was himself-for various invalid and unprovable reasons, such as that he was one of the earliest, famous believers of the West, had been made a Hand of the Cause by Shoghi Effendi and President of the International Bahá'í Council. All this was true, but it still did not make him the second Guardian. Mason Remey's activities, beginning in 1960, when he "proclaimed" himself the second Guardian, were a profound source of embarrassment to his fellow-Hands who, in addition to all their other heavy, heartbreaking responsibilities, now found themselves obliged to progressively remonstrate with, admonish, warn, expose and finally excommunicate him. This extraordinary and sudden display of unexpected pride and conceit passed over the Bahá'í world, producing a brief flutter in France, a passing ripple in Chile and sundry vibrations in the United States, Pakistan and one or two other countries, and was soon gone forever. For those who, like myself and Paul Haney, had known and loved him all our lives, and Milly Collins, who had been a particularly old friend and co-worker, it was a very bitter and tragic experience. Unfollowed and unmourned, alone and isolated in his old age, when he died he was buried by his young secretary who was not a Bahá'í Although this whole episode had no effect on the Faith, it added to the burdens of the Custodians, consumed hours of consideration better spent on constructive matters, and saddened our hearts. Like any branch cut off from the root, the Remey incident withered away.

Far more distressing to the Custodians, and indeed to the entire Bahá'í world, was the case of the fourteen Bahá'í prisoners in Morocco, three of whom were condemned to death and five to life imprisonment for no other reason than their religious beliefs. Comparable to the case of the Persian Bahá'ís during the lifetime of Shoghi Effendi in 1955, when a violent national attack on the part of the fanatical Muslim clergy took

Suddenly a spotlight was focused on a small group of Bahá'ís in the northern provincial town of Nador who were imprisoned and accused, fundamentally, of heresy, some of them being sentenced to death. From its onset this case became a constant preoccupation of the Custodians; ceaseless anxiety and effort, and in the end acute anguish, became our daily lot as the date for the execution of three of the prisoners in that city approached. The extraordinary amount of material and comment covering this case-which began in April 1962 and ended in December 1963 -- cannot be presented here. The facts, the highlights, and some of the major documents are, however, included.

The Moroccan case involved the imprisonment of 14 Bahá'ís in three cities, 7 in Nador, 2 in Fez, and 5 in Tetuan in the northern Province of Nador; the arrest of the first five took place on April 10, 1962. Already, however, throughout the Riff area religious opposition of the Muslim community had been steadily increasing; some of the homes of the Bahá'ís had been searched by the police and their Bahá'í literature seized, and in January 1962 a well-known Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Tetuan was dismissed from his post and warned to have no association with his co-religionists. Another Bahá'í a resident of Nador, lost his government job shortly thereafter.

All the accused were men of good repute; with one exception they were all young men, holding respected jobs, with some standing in the community; among them was a teacher, a Customs official and a police inspector. Six of them were single, eight were married, and seven had children. The youngest was only 20 years old, the eldest 38. One of the first five arrested, under police interrogation, was hung upside down by the feet but refused to divulge the names of any other Bahá'ís all of them

On October 31st; the fourteen Bahá'í men were brought to the Regional Court of Nador to hear the charges against them and were formally accused of: Rebellion, Disorder, Attack on Public Security, Forming an Association of Criminals, and Attack on Religious Faith. The difference between Bahá'í religious laws-fasting, prayer, pilgrimage, etc.-and those of Islam, were compared in detail by the Court.

The first intimation we received at the World Centre of the arrest of the Bahá'ís was a newspaper article from Morocco; on April 14th, news of these happenings burst in the press through an article in the prestigious Le Courier du Maroc. While the case was being widely publicized in Moroccan newspapers and spreading to the foreign press, the Custodians were constantly in touch with the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assemblies in those days 44 in number-most notably that of the United States of America, in which country is situated the seat of the United Nations, by which we were recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization with observer status, under the title of the Bahá'í International Community", which officially represented at that time Bahá'í communities in 257 countries, territories and dependencies. All national Bahá'í bodies were likewise urged to bring as much pressure, by every means within their power, upon the Moroccan authorities in defence of the innocence of their fellow believers, whilst the Bahá'ís of the entire world, with full hearts, prayed for their protection and release.

Between the date the Moroccan Bahá'ís had been arrested, in April, and the stage of our open, world-wide publicity, every effort to protect the prisoners and prove their innocence had been undertaken by the Hands in the Holy Land. Two distinguished Moroccan lawyers had been engaged in their defence and a famous French lawyer had come from Paris to join them.

The Custodians felt very strongly that no attack should be made on the central authorities but that the blame should rest-where it in fact originated-on a small, fanatical, prejudiced and misinformed group of local leaders, who unfortunately at that period did not seem susceptible to any central State control from Rabat.

Throughout the hearings it was repeatedly asserted that one of the cardinal teachings of the Bahá'í Faith is obedience to government, that the Bahá'í International Community is accredited to agencies of the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization, and so on, to no avail.

On December 14, 1962 the Regional Court of Nador pronounced its verdict. Of the original 14 people involved in the case, four were acquitted, stating they were Muslims, one was acquitted through what appears to be