OXFORD AND SOUTH AFRICA

Doubtless the editor of the Daily Express was unaware of these antics, for it was this series - 'my first "scoop", the first story, I think, in a mass circulation paper' about the Oxford Group8 - which confirmed Driberg in his job, which was later to develop into his long and brilliant term as the paper's columnist under the pen-name 'William Hickey'.

Buchman was not particularly down-hearted. On the day after the hostile article, he wrote down, 'Nothing to fear. Praise God. All is well. Sleep.'

The press attacks did, indeed, call forth a certain amount of support. The Oxford Times of 2 March declared that 'it is definitely not a new religious sect. It is an endeavour to realise more fully the value of Christianity as applied more especially to everyday life and problems', while the Church Times, which covered one of a series of At Homes given by Lady Beecham in her Grosvenor Square home, reported that 'One by one, young men stood up... and told in the simplest possible way how the influence of Frank Buchman ... had completely altered their lives, making them real people instead of posers ... Buchmanism is clearly not an "ism", in the sense that it has tenets of its own ... Its effect on the individual is, so far as I could perceive, to convert conventional religion into a real and personal religion.'9

The attacks, nevertheless, continued. A. P. Herbert, one of the most amusing humorists of the day, produced a satire in Punch obviously based on the Driberg cuttings10 and, at the beginning of the summer term, the Oxford undergraduate magazine Isis demanded the removal of the 'Buchmanites' from the university. 'Buchmanism,' it declared, 'is flourishing ... In an atmosphere hovering between giggles and fanaticism, restraint is thrown aside.' The authorities, it continued, appeared to be alarmed but remained apathetic. It was time something was done.11

The Isis article had a negligible effect in Britain, but it was picked up by both Time12 and by the New York Times, which added, as its own contribution, that the university authorities were urging the expulsion of Buchman and his followers.13*

(* One of those who spread this rumour was the Revd F.D.V. Narborough who had been Chaplain of Worcester College, 1922-6.)

136