Up to the present time the editorial staff of The Bahá’í World have been unable to make a suitable survey of Bahá’í activities throughout Europe prepared from one single perspective, but much material has been received from the National Assemblies of England and Germany as well as from local Bahá’í centers.

An item of Bahá’í interest which received only brief reference in the Bahá’í Year Book, 1925-1926, was the conference held at London in September, 1924, on Some Living Religions Within the British Empire. This conference was arranged by a joint executive committee representative of the School of Oriental Studies and the Sociological Society. On invitation of the joint committee, the Bahá’í Cause was represented by papers read by Mr. Mountfort Mills and Rúḥí Effendi Afnán. The chairman during this session of the conference was the Reverend Walter Walsh, the minister of the Free Religious Movement, who on Sunday, September 28th, delivered an address on the Bahá’í Movement reprinted elsewhere in this volume of The Bahá’í World

Public Bahá’í meetings are regularly held in London and also Manchester, and an interesting phase of the Movement in London consists in the frequent visits of Bahá’ís from many countries of the Orient and also Australia and New Zealand. Among the conservative people of Great Britain the Movement has developed more slowly than in Germany or the United States, but on the other hand the teachings themselves have been accepted by a number of influential authors, ministers and scientists, the results of whose active interest will count increasingly in future years. It was a member of the National Assembly of England, Dr. J. E. Esslemont, M. B., Ch. B., F. B. E . A ., who wrote the most satisfactory general introduction to Bahá’í history and teachings which has yet appeared. Dr. Esslemont spent the last two years of his life assisting Shoghi Effendi at Haifa, and his letters to individuals and groups throughout English speaking countries were most gratifying and helpful.

For many years the cosmopolitan center of Paris has maintained Bahá’í meeting-places conducted in both the French and English languages. Many of the most important works of Bahá’í scholarship in the West have emanated from Paris, due to the proficiency of M. Hippolyte Dreyfus-Barney in the Oriental languages and his life-long devotion to the Cause. Many of the workers responsible for the development of the Movement in the United States and Canada were first attracted to the Cause and acquainted with its teachings in Paris.

The Paris center, like that of London, is also cosmopolitan and several societies such as the Alliance Spirituelle Universelle and the United Association for the Federation of Churches, realizing that their ideals are contained in the message of Bahá’u’lláh, have drawn ever closer to the Bahá’ís.

Through the courtesy of Dr. Hermann Grossmann, associate editor of The Bahá’í World, a detailed report of Bahá’í activities in Germany, too extensive to reproduce verbatim in these pages, has recently been received.