COMMUNISM AND ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Different though he had become in many respects, Jim received little encouragement from his family. His brother, Tom, who was now firmly established at the Daily Express, responded to the news of his change with the remark, 'I knew you could sink very low, but I never thought you would sink so totally as to associate with those people.'4 His mother was more realistically sceptical, saying he owed thousands of pounds. Buchman and his friends kept in constant touch with him, and his letters to Buchman - which were often daily - show that he was keeping free of drink, enjoying their fellowship, genuinely helping many people, and even returning to surgery.

Then suddenly, on 17 February 1932, in the same week in which he had sent Buchman letters of joy and comradeship - he was in Geneva, Buchman in Rome - he wrote saying he could no longer work with Buchman and the Oxford Group. His letter expressed his 'deep, deep gratitude for all you have done for me' and stated that he 'would never waver in his loyalty to the Group', but added that he had, ten days ago, seen an exaggeration concerning himself in a copy of a letter from Buchman to a third person which had 'shaken his confidence'. Buchman had written that Jim had been sent to him by 'the Princes through one of their ADCs'. Buchman immediately cabled him, 'Forgive and forget my mistakes,' and followed with a letter apologising for what he called his 'legally incorrect statement', while expressing himself 'puzzled that you should take such drastic action'. But Driberg firmly cut the links.

Whether this was the sole - or real - reason for his action was never clear. His elder brother John attributed the sudden move to the 'mental factor which has now and then sent Jim off on absurd tangents'.5 Humphrey Butler, the equerry who had sent Jim to Buchman, wrote of his 'brain storms' being 'the fault of the war', and said he would try to 'persuade him to continue his work with the Group'.6 He failed, and telephoned to say that he thought Buchman's 'little inaccuracy' was being used by Jim as 'a cloak to hide from other things'.7 A year later Jim's former wife came into Brown's Hotel and confirmed that her ex-husband owed very large sums to medical colleagues and socialite friends, and it became clear that there were layers of difficulty to which Buchman and his friends had not penetrated.

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