August 9

The races of the world, Nordic, Slavonic, Mongolian, Arab and African are alike subjected to its [the Second World War's] consuming violence. The world's religious systems are no less affected by the universal paralysis which is creeping over the minds and souls of men. The persecution of world Jewry, the rapid deterioration of Christian institutions, the intestine division and disorders of Islam, are but manifestations of the fear and trembling that has seized humanity in its hour of unprecedented turmoil and peril. On the high seas, in the air, on land, in the forefront of battle, in the palaces of kings, and the cottages of peasants, in the most hallowed sanctuaries, whether secular or religious, the evidences of God's retributive act and mysterious discipline are manifest. Its heavy toll is steadily mounting--a holocaust sparing neither prince nor peasant, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old. (In the handwriting of Shoghi Effendi, appended to a letter dated 25 May 1941 written on his behalf to the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, published in ‘Messages to America: Selected Letters and Cablegrams Addressed to the Bahá'ís of North America 1932-1946’;  compilation ’Holocaust, the Greater Plan of God, and the Destiny of the Jewish People’, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)