News from Haifa: The Master Through the War

In the autumn of 1918, the *Star of the West* devoted a substantial section of its issue to the first reliable news in three and a half years of the safety of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the war-strained Holy Land.

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The First World War had, from the autumn of 1914 onward, made direct communication with the Master almost impossible. Letters mailed from America took months to arrive when they arrived at all. Cables were intercepted. The Ottoman authorities, who controlled the Palestinian coast, regarded the prophetic Household with suspicion and at certain moments threatened the Master with worse measures. For three years the American Bahá'í community had been operating with fragmentary, often contradictory, reports of the situation of its spiritual centre.

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The British advance through Palestine in the late summer of 1918 changed the conditions overnight. General Allenby's forces took Haifa on 23 September 1918. The Master was liberated, with the rest of the Holy Land's population, from the Ottoman authority that had been a periodic menace for several decades. Communications with the outside world resumed almost at once.

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The first cable to reach America was a brief one, sent through British military channels by an officer who had called personally on the Master to inquire after His welfare. The cable read, in its preserved laconic form: *The Master is well. The American friends may rejoice.* It was delivered to the *Star's* editorial office in early October and published within the week.

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The fuller story took longer. Several weeks later the Master sent His own first letter through the now-open postal channels. The letter described, with His characteristic calm, the conditions of the war years. The household had suffered hunger but not starvation. There had been threats of forcible deportation but the threats had not been executed. The community of friends in the Holy Land was intact. The work of the Cause had continued, by what means the conditions allowed.

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The Master expressed thanks for the prayers of the American friends. He confirmed that the prayers had reached Him; that the spiritual link had not been broken even when the postal link had failed; that the news of the American friends' faithfulness through the years of silence had been received in the Household with the deepest gratitude.

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The *Star* published the Master's letter as the lead item of its November issue. The American believers, who had been holding their collective breath for three years, exhaled. The link to Haifa was open again.

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The Master would live another three years after the liberation. The Tablets of the Divine Plan, composed during the war years and gradually carried out by various pilgrims and travelers, would now be fully published. The visit of American believers to Haifa, suspended since 1914, would recommence. The lines of communication would, for the remaining brief years of the Master's earthly ministry, be fully open.

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