Efficiency

Another time he came over for dinner and he was rather disturbed. He had some cables from America about certain matters, and some actions had been taken, and he was a little disturbed at the actions which were taken, actually, and he started to talk about it, and discuss it, and he read the cable that had been received, and he turned to me and said, “Roy, you were on the National Assembly when this thing happened, when it first came up, weren’t you?” And I said, “Yes, sir, I was.” And he said, “Can you tell me what happened there at that first meeting?” So I started to tell him what happened. He stopped me when I got about one-fifth of the way, and he said, “No, no, no, I will tell you what happened, and then you tell me if I’m right or wrong.” And then he proceeded to discuss that meeting, what had taken place. The spirit behind the actions which were taken, which was the thing I was trying to convey to him, because the action was simple. You know, you did this. But why did you do this? That’s the important thing. But the spirit behind it. And he described that in detail, and he said, “Am I right or am I wrong?” And I said, “Shoghi Effendi, you are right even to the details.” He said, “You see, I don’t have to have all this information. God gives me a feeling in my heart. And when I have that feeling and I have it strong, I know what the situation is, and it doesn’t make any difference what anybody says, what anybody does, what anybody gives me or how much they say, but that’s the situation and I know it, in any part of the world it’s the same thing.”

You can’t feel the precision of mind. I’ve dealt in America with high executives all of my business life. Men who have a problem, and they size it up, and they see the meat and heart of it and seize the situation immediately, but they pale along the side of Shoghi Effendi. Even those long letters from various parts of the world and they defuse their love for the Guardian, their devotion for the Guardian, what they would do to serve the Guardian, and then two or three pages of questions, and he would read them and say, “But why don’t they just tell me what they want to know? They keep talking around the subject instead of the heart.” He said, “I don’t have time to read all of these pages. Now why don’t you correspond and find out exactly what the question is, and then give it to me and I’ll give them the answer.” Mind of precision you never saw! He was small in stature, he was tender, he was kind, he was loving, but I tell you the precise mind! And how he suffered from the inefficiencies of the Bahá’ís. He used to get letters from other people and national assemblies, mountains, and oceans and oceans of devotion, but mountains of inefficiency. Everything he did was efficient. Everything he did had to have a result immediately. And when I was there, we started to talk to him about this, and he answered many questions. There wasn’t any need to go into all of the details. “Well, I went to Jerusalem, and I told Mr. Smith, and I talked with him,…”, and he would say, “No, no, Mr. Smith said so-and-so in Jerusalem, and that’s all the things that should be answered.” He wasn’t interested in details. He was only interested in the heart of every subject, and it was in the heart that he gave his answer, and gave it immediately. And if the heart wasn’t there, he recognized it.

I remember the Guardian telling me of how (I believe it must have been in early 1920) one of the old American Baháis had sent a gift to the Master of a Cunningham automobile; notice of its arrival at the quayside in port came just as the weekend commenced and the Master gave Shoghi Effendi instructions to see that it was cleared and delivered to the house. Shoghi Effendi told me that although the next day there were no high officials in the port and it was not a business day, he succeeded in getting the car delivered and when it arrived he went to the Master and informed Him it was outside the door. He said the Master was very surprised and immensely pleased and asked him how he had succeeded in doing this. Shoghi Effendi told Him he had taken the papers and gone to the homes of various officials, asking them to sign the documents and give the necessary orders for the car of Sir ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbas to be delivered to Him at once. This was typical of the way Shoghi Effendi did his work throughout his entire life. He always wanted everything done at once, if not sooner, and everything he had any personal control over progressed at that speed.