Buchman and Major Butler, meanwhile, had consulted each other about the mental and emotional factors involved, and the Major found Driberg a post, at his own request, as a ship's surgeon. Before he left Driberg wrote Buchman, who was then in America, 'I would like to thank you and the Group once more for all you have done for me and to let you know my prayers are with you always.'8

Alas, Jim Driberg could not make it alone. As Tom, his brother, relates in Ruling Passions,9 he soon turned back to the bottle and to massive borrowing. This defeated his attempt to establish himself as a surgeon in Brazil and, for many years, he lived as an awkward pensioner of his brother's, first at Bradwell Manor and then at a boarding house in Devon, where he died in November 1956.

Tom Driberg alleges in his book that 'according to MRA myth, it was I who, in sheer wickedness, lured him back to the demon drink'. Certainly if this statement was made - and, on occasion, it does seem to have been, in conversation - it was made without evidence. Equally, there is no evidence that Buchman himself took that line.

Buchman had given Jim Driberg the same attention he had given to McGhee Baxter the previous year. He had been prodigal of his time and care, and had taken many risks on his behalf. In 1938 he advised one of his friends to think again before taking responsibility for a certain person: 'At the request of Humphrey Butler, I spent a lot of time on a person like that. I am doubtful about ambulance cases like that, as they need very special handling.'10

Though he continued to help many in desperate straits, Buchman felt that his time should now be mainly spent in training people who could tolerate the pressures of his developing work.

Even as Buchman moved towards this decision, events were taking place independently in two American cities which were to lead to his principles being applied to such hospital cases by other people, first throughout America and then all over the world.

In Akron, Ohio, Jim Newton, the young salesman at the Toytown Tavern weekend who had since become personal assistant to Harvey Firestone, the tyre manufacturer, found that one of Firestone's sons was a serious alcoholic. He offered to try to help the young man, and took him first to a drying-out clinic on the Hudson River and then on to an Oxford Group conference in Denver. The young man gave his life to God, and thereafter enjoyed extended periods of sobriety. The family doctor called it a 'medical miracle'.

Firestone Senior was so grateful that, in January 1933, he invited Buchman and a team of sixty to conduct a ten-day campaign in Akron. They left behind them a strong functioning group which met each week in the house of T. Henry Williams, an inventor of machinery for making tyre moulds used by the chief American tyre-makers. Among them were an Akron surgeon, Bob Smith, and his wife Anne. Bob was a secret drinker and it was not until he had been attending Oxford Group meetings for some time that he told them the extent of his problem.

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