Shoghi Effendi had difficulty in securing suitable secretarial support.

Shoghi Effendi is known to have written some 26,000 letters to the Bahá’í world: those directed to the Antipodes, approximately 700, appear in the present volume. These include 81 that appeared in Letters of the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand, as well as 82 published in Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand. A select number of additional letters have been included which, although not directed to correspondents within the region, have some direct relevance to it.

As the letters were penned for Shoghi Effendi by a series of secretaries, across almost four decades, they lack a uniformity in style and presentation. Different uses of “s” and “z”, for example, have been retained, rather than standardised. Every effort has been taken to ensure that the contents of the letters have been reproduced in their entirety. In a few instances, however, names have been omitted out of respect for the privacy of individuals. Minor errors in grammar and style have been corrected with permission of the Department of Archives. The name and address of the addressee, where they were included in a letter, have been reproduced. In other cases, details have been supplied from accompanying envelopes, or other sources, and supplied in brackets thus []. Text written by Shoghi Effendi’s own hand has been rendered in italics.

Shoghi Effendi had difficulty in securing suitable secretarial support. At some times family members assisted, while at others, Western Bahá’ís served as secretaries during extended periods spent in Haifa. They included ‘Azízu’lláh S. Bahádur (in 1924), Soheil Afnán (1924-30), Rúhí Afnán (1926-1933), H. Rabbání (1931-40), Mehrengiz Rabbání (1932), J. E. Esslemont - who had lived in Australia briefly before becoming a Bahá’í – (1925), and Ethel J. Rosenberg (1927). Later, secretarial support was given to the Guardian by Rúhíyyih Khánum, and in the 1950s, Amelia Collins (1951), Leroy Ioas (1952-57), and Jessie Revell (1953).

https://bahai.works/Messages_to_the_Antipodes/Preface