The Guardian's Retreat to Switzerland

In the early summer of 1923 Shoghi Effendi again left Haifa and sought some restoration of health and solace in the solitude of the high mountains of Switzerland.

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But, unlike later years, when he continued to keep in constant touch with the work of the Cause by cable and letter, this was once more a complete break, a fleeing into the wilderness, a soul-searching, a communion with himself and his destiny in order to find the strength to go back and assume the duties of his high office.

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He returned in November 1923, and the letter he wrote to the American believers on the 14th of that month, in which he says he has returned from a "forced" absence, contains a sentence that gives a clue to what must have been passing in his mind during that period.

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He says the "remarkable revelations of the Beloved’s Will and Testament, so amazing in all its aspects, so emphatic in its injunctions, have challenged and perplexed the keenest minds..." Can one doubt that they perplexed his mind too?

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With the greatest humbleness of nature on one hand and the great faith and confidence in the Master on the other that so strongly characterized Shoghi Effendi he must indeed have devoted much thought to the implications of that Will and at what his own course must be now that he was returning "after a long and unbroken silence" to take up once again "my work of service to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh".

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This time he made it a point to arrive before the commemoration of the second anniversary of the Master’s ascension.

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