MORAL RE-ARMAMENT GOES PUBLIC

From Visby Buchman moved on to Interlaken in Switzerland, where he had called an international assembly for Moral Re-Armament. Oxford was now not only too small but also too far away from the centre of events. The assembly covered the first twelve days of September 1938, when Europe seemed to be on the edge of war following Hitler's threats to Czechoslovakia. 'We have set ourselves the difficult task of trying to liquidate the cost of bitterness and fear, which mounts daily,' said Buchman at the outset. 'The odds are seemingly against us, but just as individuals are delivered from their prison cells of doubt and defeat, so it is possible for nations to be delivered from their prison cells of fear, resentment, jealousy and depression. . .'1

At every meeting he strove to demonstrate this through living examples. One day Japanese and Chinese spoke side by side; on another French and German, or Sudeten and Czech, Conservative and Marxist, black and white. All described, from their own experience, how fear and greed could be overcome or the gulfs of national and racial hatred bridged. Buchman himself, contrary to his custom, spoke day after day. Whereas normally he had made only one or two major speeches a year, in mid-1938 he delivered twelve in six months.

The most controversial and long-quoted - or misquoted - among them was entitled 'Guidance or Guns'.* 'The world is at the crossroads,' he began. 'The choice is guidance or guns. We must listen to guidance or we shall listen to guns.

(* Certain critics misquoted the title as 'Guidance not guns', implying that Buchman was against the democracies rearming; cf. heading to Chapter 5 of Driberg's The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament.)

'Every man in every land should listen to guidance. In industry, in the workshop, in the nation's life, in Parliament, the normal thing is to listen to God. Each nation expresses it in its own way - but all God-controlled and God-led. Thus, with God leading, all will understand each other. Here in this philosophy is lasting peace, and only here.'2

A young Swiss asked him if it would be possible to stop war breaking out. ‘I don't know,' he replied. 'But if there are fifty men in every country who give themselves wholly, we shall pull through.'3

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As the crisis deepened, delegates to the Assembly were called into the armed forces of their different nations. Buchman's closing speech dealt with the massive moral mobilisation needed to 'answer the aching hunger of mankind for peace and a new world'.4 Then other delegates left for home. As Gudrun Egebjerg, the Danish journalist, sat having lunch at the railway station just before her train left to cross Germany to Denmark, a car drove up. 'Buchman walked straight to our table', she recalled later, 'and said to me, "You looked so sad this morning. I just want to leave this with you: 'I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.' Goodbye," and he was gone.'

'I had never seen that side of Frank before,' Miss Egebjerg added. 'The leader, the statesman I knew. The gay, warm laughter, the sharpness and challenge; but never before this simple deep compassion, taking time on a very full day to drive across town to say a last word, just because he remembered a gloomy face.' It was one of many such incidents. Another participant in the Assembly, General C. R. P. Winser, remarked, 'Far from being obsessed by the crisis, Buchman was thinking for everyone and of everyone.'

Buchman took a team to Geneva for a luncheon at the invitation of League delegates, which Hambro had delivered personally at Interlaken. The luncheon was held on 15 September 1938, the day Chamberlain flew to meet Hitler in Berchtesgaden. Buchman's hosts were four leading political delegates to the League,* and diplomats from fifty-three countries were present. Hambro introduced Buchman and his colleagues to his fellow diplomats: 'Where we have failed in changing politics, they have succeeded in changing lives, and giving men and women a new way of living.'5

(* C. J. Hambro, J. A. E. Patijn, N. W. Jordan of New Zealand and V. V. Pella of Roumania.)

Patijn, now Dutch Foreign Minister, told how tension had grown between his country and Belgium, while he was Ambassador there. The International Court at The Hague had decided against the Netherlands in a vital case, and he himself had been annoyed by the way certain Belgian papers reported the affair, making the Netherlands look ridiculous. 'At that time', he continued, 'I had to speak at an important dinner in Brussels. It was suggested I should talk about the case. I resolutely refused. But just before I was about to respond to the toast, the conviction came to me that I had to refer to the dispute. I complimented my hosts on their success and said that in the future we should be better friends. From that day all bitter comments against my country ceased.' 'The fact that I was able to make such a speech', Patijn added, 'was only because of my deep conviction that it was much more in accord with God's will than the speech which I had previously wished to make.'6

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The Journal de Genève issued a four-page supplement on this occasion and the editor, Jean Martin, sent it to his fellow editors in many countries. 'Whatever happens in Europe,' he wrote them, 'Moral Re-Armament remains the only answer to recurrent crisis and the one foundation for permanent peace.'7

Munich, with its attempt to contain Hitler's drive by appeasing it, came and went. Buchman was relieved, as were most people, at the removal of the immediate threat of war, but he did not think anything fundamental had been achieved. He regarded it as a respite in which moral and spiritual re-armament must be pressed ahead in parallel with increased material re-armament.

Buchman's speech in East Ham had, meanwhile, stimulated a series of letters in The Times. The first was from thirty-three Members of Parliament of all parties, who pointed to 'the Oxford Group's crusade for Moral Re-Armament' as 'urgently needed'.8

On 10 September, as diplomacy became ever more frantic, this letter was followed by one headlined 'Moral Re-Armament - the Need of the Hour', signed by seventeen public figures, including former Prime Minister Lord Baldwin, two Field Marshals, an Admiral of the Fleet and Lord Trenchard, the creator of the Royal Air Force: 'The strength of a nation consists in the vitality of her principles. Policy, foreign as well as domestic, is for every nation ultimately determined by the character of her people and the inspiration of her leaders; by the acceptance in their lives and in their policy of honesty, faith and love as the foundations on which a new world may be built. Without these qualities, the strongest armaments, the most elaborate pacts, only postpone the hour of reckoning ...

'God's Living Spirit calls each nation, like each individual, to its highest destiny, and breaks down the barriers of fear and greed, of suspicion and hatred. This same Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all citizens in the service of the nation, and all nations in the service of mankind. "Thy Will be done on earth" is not only a prayer for guidance, but a call to action. For His Will is our Peace.'9

Lord Salisbury, who both signed and took part in assembling this letter, hoped that 'the German leaders would read it'.10 So not only were copies sent to Lord Stamp, one of the signatories who was in Germany at the time, but General Winser telephoned Lord Redesdale, currently Hitler's guest in Berlin, who promised to read it to his host. The letter was printed all over the world and was favourably commented upon in some Austrian and Italian newspapers.

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Swiss11 and Dutch national leaders instigated their own campaigns for moral re-armament. The Dutch call was signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Chief of the Naval Staff, the President of the Supreme Court and a number of former Ministers and Governors of the Dutch East Indies.12 Queen Wilhelmina described this Call to her foreign Minister as 'a campaign against defeatism'.13 The Queen issued a Personal Word to the Nation three weeks later emphasising that 'our civilisation, even though undergirded by the reinforcement of our military strength', could not avoid destruction without 'the conviction which has been expressed in this call for moral and spiritual re-armament'.14* When King Leopold of the Belgians made a state visit to Holland, he spoke of 'the rapprochement and co-operation of our two nations' developing and gaining solidarity and strength 'in the service of this ideal'.15

(* Whether the Queen realised that this whole campaign had originated in Buchman's speech in East Ham is not clear.)

Public support for Moral Re-Armament in Britain was growing. Seventeen national trades union leaders, including the current and three former Chairmen of the Trades Union Congress, wrote that it 'represented the dynamic spirit of the best of the early Labour leaders and it must be recreated'.16 Groups of civic leaders and journalists, and thirty-seven top sportsmen, followed. Fourteen prominent Scots17 and the leaders of cities like Liverpool18 joined in. On Armistice Day the Earl of Athlone and six others* wrote of the readiness of Britain throughout her history 'to meet recurrent crises with the courage each demanded'. 'But the spiritual crisis remains,' they continued. 'Nation and Empire must stand or fall by our response to that call. The choice is moral re-armament or national decay.'19 The call was taken up by the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Gowrie,20 and by national leaders and the press in many parts of the Commonwealth. On 10 October Buchman wrote to King George of Greece, 'Moral Re-Armament is becoming a rallying point for the democracies to give an answer to the taunt of the dictators that democracies have no plan.'21

(* Admiral of the Fleet Sir Osman Brock, Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent, the author Ian Hay, Lord Howard of Penrith, Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice and Lord Rennell of Rodd.)

The idea of Moral Re-Armament had, in fact, caught the imagination of many leaders, who saw in it the expression of an essential requirement for the preservation of peace. The urgency of the situation impelled many people, known and unknown to Buchman, into action. He had nothing to do with the letters themselves, and Patijn among others thanked him for his readiness to stay in the background.

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In Britain Buchman had, after prolonged public pressure, been invited for the first time to speak over the BBC,* though the Director of Religion, F. A. Iremonger, tried to retain some control and deprecated the use of the word 'change',22 to no avail. Lord Salisbury had led the demand, encouraged by Archbishop Lang who was glad he was trying to get the BBC 'to make some sort of reparation for the rather grievous wrong which it did to the Movement by its record of that unfortunate Foyle luncheon'.23 Buchman sent Salisbury the draft of the talk, which he entitled 'Chaos Against God', for his opinion. 'I admired your speech very much,' Salisbury wrote. 'I may say that I think you put the order of spiritual awakening the right way up - first the individual, then the society and last of all the international relation ... I think the phrase, "The dictatorship of the Holy Spirit", is a most noteworthy phrase which will persist. Altogether it is a most striking utterance.'24

(* In a series on 'The Validity of Religious Experience', broadcast on 27 November 1938.)

Archbishop Lang had sent a message of congratulation to Buchman for his sixtieth birthday in June 'on the great work he has been able to achieve in bringing multitudes of human lives in all parts of the world under the transforming Power of Christ'.25 At the beginning of October the Archbishop made a broadcast calling for national repentance and a return to the will of God, in which he referred to the statements calling for moral re-armament: 'All, in one way or another, insist that what is most needed in our personal, civil, industrial and international life is, to quote the letter of the Members of Parliament, "a re-dedication of our people to those elementary virtues of honesty, unselfishness and love which many of us have allowed to take a secondary place; the subjection, as the Foreign Secretary once reminded us, of every part of our being to the service of God". . . The commonplaces of the pulpit may begin to bear fruit if they become the convictions of men in Parliament, in office and in the factory- of "the man in the street". Companies of men and women united in such loyalty to the leadership of Christ in the midst of the nation would .. . gradually leaven the whole lump. Here is the highest and deepest form of national service.'26

That November, Buchman addressed a luncheon at the National Trade Union Club, of which George Light was now Chairman. He sat between Ben Tillett and Tom Mann, the legendary leaders of the 1889 London Dock Strike. Both became firm friends of his, and Tillett later entered the lists when Buchman was criticised in the Daily Telegraph. 27 He said of him, 'I like Frank Buchman. . . He is a great man because he is a lover of his fellow men,' and, during his own last illness, sent Buchman a verbal message: 'Tell him to go on fighting. Give him my love and tell him 1 wish him the best of luck. Tell him: You have a great international movement. Use it. It is the hope of tomorrow. Your movement will bring sanity back to the world.'28

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Asked for a New Year message by the Press Association, Buchman tried to put his message in terms understandable to everyone at that particular moment. The initials ARP (Air Raid Precautions) were by now familiar to everyone in Britain, as trenches were dug and shelters installed in parks and back gardens. Someone had suggested that Moral and Spiritual Re-Armament was cumbrous, and might be shortened to MRA. Buchman at once accepted this idea, just as he had taken the original phrase from Blomberg. 'MRA', he began his New Year message, 'is the answer to the dark forebodings and fears for 1939. MRA is as essential as ARP, and takes away the fear. MRA is a commodity for every householder ... It is God's property ... It means God in control personally and nationally. It means the knowledge and exact information that God's guidance brings.'29

MRA was also being promoted in Britain by Bunny Austin, Britain's current tennis idol.* Austin had first met Buchman six years before, while playing tennis in the South of France. He became convinced that Buchman's ideas were the best hope of maintaining peace in Europe, something which he had been much concerned about, though unable to find any practical form of action. When he had returned to London, however, he had met determined resistance from his actress wife, Phyllis Konstam. To keep the peace at home he had given way, and apart from their encounter at the Foyle lunch had seen little of Buchman and his friends. He had, however, continued to believe in Buchman's approach and, when the Munich crisis blew up, he had decided that he must follow his conscience, come what may, and throw in his lot with them.

(* And still, as I write, the last Englishman to have reached the Men's Final at Wimbledon.)

'The full impact of the crisis came home to me when, on 11 September 1938, a warden called with gas masks for us,' he wrote later.30 'He said our baby would have to have a gas-proof tent. Suddenly I realised that my forebodings of six years earlier had come true. And what had I done about it? I had been brought in touch with an answer - and had turned away, betraying the best in myself, betraying my wife and betraying my fellow men. For I believe that if the countless Englishmen like myself, who had met the Group in the early thirties, had wholeheartedly accepted its challenge, there could have been such a stiffening of morale that Hitler would never have doubted our willingness to fight. As it was, we in Britain had drifted towards war unwilling to face what Germany was doing, although it was spelt out for us in Mein Kampf.'

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Austin's first thought was to mobilise sportsmen behind Moral Re-Armament. Hence their letter to The Times. With George Eyston, the racing motorist, he spoke to 58,000 spectators at half-time in the Arsenal v Chelsea match, introduced by the Arsenal coach George Allison. Similar action was taken elsewhere in the country. Then Austin produced a book containing the calls for Moral Re-Armament in various countries, together with vivid personal stories by himself, the unemployed leader Bill Rowell, and others. Work on the book began on 1 December; it was printed and on the bookstalls on 14 December. 'I was used to moving with speed on a tennis court,' remarks Austin; 'I was not used to moving with this speed off it! The book sold rapidly. It was advertised on ten thousand posters up and down the country, donated by the advertising agencies. The first edition of 250,000 soon sold out. The second quarter of a million were printed.'31 To advertise the book, the MRA symbol was printed on millions of milk-bottle tops.

Moral Re-Armament, Archbishop Lang said in his New Year broadcast, had 'caught on across Britain'. But it had not been without its struggles. Bill Jaeger reported from East London: 'Will Jacob (a Labour Party agent), Councillor George Moncar and Councillor Mrs Brignell were brought before their Ward Committee on a motion that they could not be in the Labour Party and the Oxford Group at the same time...the motion was defeated by eight votes to six. Tod Sloan was recently waylaid outside his home by three Communist Party leaders and told what they thought of him for an hour and a half.'32

Moral Re-Armament was also, according to Buchman, meeting 'persistent opposition from certain conventional religious people'. The opposition was focussed round 'phraseology', the objection being that the letters in the press did not mention the name of Christ sufficiently. To one old friend who raised these criticisms, Buchman wrote, 'I fear your informants have not grasped the truth that lies behind MRA... Take the close of the Baldwin letter: who does "His Will" refer to but Christ? After all, who rearms us? We have got to remember, however, that if we are going to reach statesmen, we have got to put our truth in the language of statesmen. The Christian standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love - these are the foundation stones of the state . . . Now, for a man to be honest is not all the gospel - that is true - but it is a place where certain people can begin and where certain nations have to begin if they are to challenge the thinking of the world.'33

As the campaign strengthened and the weeks passed, the American press took an increasing interest. 'In America, the beginnings of the recognition of the need of moral rearmament are to be noted,' wrote David Lawrence, editor of United States News* 'But in Great Britain the movement has reached proportions which are truly sensational.'34 Invitations to launch Moral Re-Armament more widely in America came from many sources. A group of Congressmen cabled: 'Washington responsive to Moral Re-Armament. Growing interest here in British experience with MRA .. .'35 Later, a staff writer of the Saturday Evening Post even wrote that it was 'probably true that, as much as any other agency, Moral Re-Armament had advanced the programme of England's military preparedness on the non-military side. To it is due an important part of the credit that, since Munich, British morale has improved at least as fast as Britain's fighting machine.'36

(* Later US News and World Report.)

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During these months in Britain Buchman's attention was also focussed on two domestic matters. The first was the need to find a new headquarters for his work. When in 1937, the year of King George VI's Coronation, Brown's Hotel could no longer provide the cut rates negotiated in the Depression, temporary offices and a flat nearby were taken. It was not until 1938 that the problem was solved by the purchase of 45 Berkeley Square,* as a centre for hospitality and administration. The house had been the home of Lord Clive of India and its reception rooms, designed by Sir William Kent and Sir William Chambers, were ideal for large-scale meetings and entertaining. The Earl of Powys, Lord Clive, agreed to the use of the name 'Clive House', while regretting that, as far as he knew, the tradition that Lord Clive's ghost appeared from time to time was without foundation.

(* A 99-year lease of the house was bought for £35,000 and was the property of the Oxford Group.)

On Buchman's sixtieth birthday in June 1938, while there was still no furniture or carpets in the house and nothing but hessian on the walls, a dinner for 200 was held for him there. It was an occasion which reflected his years in Britain. The white-haired Cockney, Tod Sloan, sat next to Lady Antrim. Sloan was one of the few speakers. 'In Tidal Basin', he said, 'the people are really hungry for this new leadership. There are many homes in West Ham, East Ham, Barking, Ilford and Dagenham where whole families are living this quality of life. We must see its meaning is kept intact, that it stays a living, loving, obedient willingness to restore God to leadership and not merely words to use as a slogan.'

Buchman recalled his first days in Cambridge when he felt that God had promised him a rebirth of Christian living in Britain within ten years. 'There was no Brown’s then; only my knees,' he said. Now he was looking forward to using this new house as a 'spiritual embassy' in the middle of London.

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The other practical matter also stemmed back to 1937, when an old friend had left a legacy of £500 to the Oxford Group. Previous legacies had been paid without question, but this time relatives contested the payment, and when it came to court Mr Justice Bennett ruled that the bequest must fail because there existed no body definable at law as 'the Oxford Group'. Hitherto everything had developed informally. Personal links were the basis of the Group's commercial dealings, accounts had been kept by responsible people and the Inland Revenue had recognised the status of volunteer workers. Now it became clear that a legal entity would have to be established.

Buchman regretted the need. When the same issue arose two years later in America, he commented, 'It looks as if we shall have to incorporate. We have always had the joy of being given money and being able to pass it on to anyone who needs exactly that help. But maybe it can't be done in just that way any more. It has still got to be a group affair - each in honour preferring one another.' It seems to have been in this spirit that he accepted the necessity for legal incorporation in Britain, while changing nothing essential in his way of working. Whole-time workers continued, like himself, to receive no salary, but to come forward and function on their own resources, if any, and their own faith and prayer. He continued to countenance no hierarchy, no membership, nothing sectarian; the only membership was in the church of a person's choice, and not in the Oxford Group or Moral Re-Armament.

Having decided on incorporation in the simplest form befitting a non-profit, charitable enterprise, the question of the name arose. Ten years' public usage of the name 'Oxford Group' made it, for Buchman, the only candidate, so a request for incorporation under that name was sent to the Board of Trade. A. P. Herbert, as the University's senior representative in Parliament, presented an official motion of the University's governing body, the Hebdomadal Council, opposing the use of that name. Herbert also had other support. One letter came to him on behalf of the Oxford Union, signed by its President, Edward Heath, while the Warden of New College, H. A. L. Fisher, thought it 'intolerable that Oxford should be saddled with the responsibility for this Salvation Army for snobs'.37

Herbert maintained that he had nothing against the Group except its use of the word 'Oxford' - 'I am not saying anything against the Oxford Group: it may be the best thing in the world. But it does not, in any true sense of the word, come from Oxford.'38 He took the matter to the correspondence columns of The Times, supported by Bishop Henson, A. L. Rowse and others. Lord Hugh Cecil, younger brother of Lord Salisbury and Herbert's predecessor as Member of Parliament for the University, however, took a contrary view. 'The Group want a name,' he wrote. 'They want it for purely practical purposes . . . The name "Oxford" is in fact in colloquial and popular use; it should therefore be also in legal use ... As to the Oxonian sentiments of Mr Herbert and others, I cannot take them very seriously, though I have been connected with Oxford ever since I was an undergraduate and was Burgess for I forget how many years. Are Mr Herbert's feelings outraged when his bootmaker speaks of "Oxford Shoes"?...'39

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The Board of Trade indicated that it would be helpful to have an expression of opinion from members of the University who favoured the use of the name. Buchman welcomed the opportunity, looking upon the controversy, as usual, as a chance to make the work he was trying to do more widely understood. He went to Oxford with a number of his Oxford-trained whole-time workers and directed a canvass, using the themes agreed between him and Sir Michael Sadler four years earlier. Lord Hugh Cecil was an early signatory.* Fellows of twenty colleges, fourteen bishops, the Public Orator, and a hundred more Oxford men prominent in the nation's life followed. A senior member of the Hebdomadal Council withdrew his name from Herbert's motion, saying he had been inadequately informed, and four college heads called for reconsideration. Professor J. W. Mackail answered a complaint at his joining Buchman's list: 'Your letter received. May I ask you to read the Acts of the Apostles?' Nonetheless the Hebdomadal Council maintained its opposition, and undoubtedly carried the majority of senior Oxford with it.

(* His actions raise a doubt about Kenneth Rose's statement (The Later Cecils, p.95) that because he declined an invitation to a house-party Lord Hugh was 'suspicious' of the Oxford Group. However, as the Hatfield papers are not available for research, I can come to no final conclusion.)

On 17 March 1939 Herbert switched the contest to the House of Commons, but only obtained fifty names for his motion on the Order Paper as against eighty-four who signed Sir Cooper Rawson's contrary motion. Two hundred and thirty-two MPs then sent a petition to the Minister in the Oxford Group's support. On 4 June, after Buchman's departure for America, the President of the Board of Trade, Oliver Stanley, decided in the Group's favour.*

(* As a non-profit body with charitable purposes, it was given permission to omit the word Limited from its incorporated title. The Articles of Association were drawn up in the then standard form for a Christian charity, but their wording was challenged by the Inland Revenue in 1949 in what became a test case. Charitable status was granted after a slight rewording and hundreds of other charities, many of which had functioned for decades under the original wording, followed suit. Buchman's work was, in subsequent years, incorporated in many countries.)

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Herbert now launched into what he later described as his 'long, lone and - it must be confessed - losing battle with the Buchmanites'. 40 He attacked Buchman in the press as 'an American crank preacher' and 'an alien who should be banned from Britain as a humbug'.41 When in the House of Commons, he called Buchman and his colleagues 'canting cheats', he was rebuked by the Speaker.42 He then announced that he would 'pursue the pirates until they haul down the noble flag they have stolen',43 a vow which was to lead him on to wider and wilder accusations in the following years. How far the humorist gave way to the campaigner is illustrated by a story told by his Punch colleague Anthony Armstrong and recorded in Reginald Pound's biography: 'A.P.H. and A.A. had adjourned one afternoon to a club in Covent Garden much frequented by journalists. Within minutes of their arrival at the club a mild-mannered man on a bar stool mentioned Buchman. A.P.H. brought the life of the place to a standstill by raging at the man as if he were an offensive heckler in a public meeting. The poor man was utterly subdued by the onslaught which, says Armstrong, was continued for "a good twenty minutes, by which time I left", cheated of his hope of a companionable interlude with an admired contemporary.'44

In Britain, the name 'Oxford Group' remains the official name of the incorporated body. But, as Sir Michael Sadler had foreseen, growth was already beginning to make the name too limited. In the nearly two years between the request for incorporation and its confirmation by the Board of Trade, the Group's campaign for Moral Re-Armament had grown so well known across the world that the new phrase became more and more used in day-to-day affairs.

By the time of the Board of Trade's decision, Buchman had been back in America for three months. On 4 March 1939 he had sailed for New York with twenty British colleagues, as well as others from the Continent. 'I love England and am surrounded by faithful friends,' he wrote at the time, 'but I am also eager to obey the call for America, an America that will know her true freedom and democracy. My spirit is still youthful, although sixty and more years have fastened their grip on me! I am still eager for the fray.'45

He planned to be back in three months; but it was seven years before he set foot in Britain again.

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 1 Buchman, p. 60.

 2 ibid., pp. 62-4.

 3 Spoerri, Dynamic out of Silence, pp. 127-8.

 4 Buchman, pp. 65-7.

 5 ibid., p. 68.

 6 ibid., pp. 77-8.

 7 Jean Martin to other editors, 8 October 1938.

 8 The Times, 1 September 1938.

 9 ibid., 10 September 1938.

10 Said to Roland Wilson, who conveyed the letter, with Salisbury's covering letter, from Cranborne to The Times.

11 8 November 1938.

12 19 September 1938 in all Dutch papers.

13 J. A. Patijn to Buchman, 3 October 1938.

14 10 October 1938.

15 21 November 1938.

16 Manchester Guardian, 26 September 1938. The same group issued a second manifesto on 24 October, which appeared in The Times and other papers.

17 The Scotsman, 30 November 1938.

18 Liverpool Post, 11 November 1938.

19 The Times, 11 November 1938,

20 11 November 1938.

21 Buchman to King George of Greece, 10 October 1938.

22 Revd F. A. Iremonger to Buchman, 25 November 1938.

23 Archbishop Lang to Lord Salisbury, 28 July 1937.

24 Lord Salisbury to Buchman, 20 November 1938.

25 Message from Archbishop Lang to Buchman for 4 June 1938, signed at Lambeth 24 May 1938.

26 National broadcast by Archbishop Lang, 2 October 1938.

27 Daily Telegraph, 12 March 1941.

28 George Light: Ben Tillett, Fighter and Pioneer, speeches and tributes with a foreword by Lord Sankey (Blandford, 1943), pp. 12-13.

29 Buchman, pp. 85-6. 'MRA' now passed into general use.

30 Austin and Konstam, pp. 98-9.

31 ibid., p. 103.

32 William Jaeger to Buchman, 3 January 1939.

33 Buchman to Arthur Kirby, 20 January 1939.

34 United States News, 24 November 1938.

35 Quoted in letter from Buchman to Lord Salisbury, 3 March 1939.

36 Saturday Evening Post, August 1939.

37 Quoted in Reginald Pound: A. P. Herbert (Michael Joseph, 1976), pp. 155-6.

38 A. P. Herbert to 'Dear Sir', 17 February 1939.

39 The Times, 8 June 1939.

40 A. P. Herbert: Independent Member (Methuen, 1970), p. 133.

41 Sunday Pictorial, 2 July 1939.

42 Hansard, 1939, lot 1099-1100.

43 Sunday Pictorial, 2 July 1939.

44 Pound, p. 156.

45 Buchman to anon., 1939 (Martin MSS).