The team was mostly under twenty-five and certainly needed training. 'We were as green as grass,' recalls Holme. 'I remember telling a Liverpool journalist before leaving that, in view of all the crime we read about in America, some of us might not come back. We had a meeting with the Salvation Army, and one of our American girls was asked to give a benediction. There was a long silence. She knew what a Benedictine was, but had never heard this new word.' The 'dog girl', attacked by a zealous theologian as to why she had not mentioned 'the blood of Christ' in her speech, replied, 'If you'd raised that at my first meeting, I'd have run six blocks.'

Their very freshness proved attractive. After the first meeting a dignified grey-haired man got hold of Holme. He asked how to have a 'quiet time', and, when he tried it, wrote down the one word 'Customs'. A Balliol man, Bernard Hallward was now Vice-President of the Montreal Star, and when the team reached Ottawa they were greeted by an eight-column headline bearing the news that he had returned $12,200 to the National Revenue Department for undeclared goods brought through from Europe.5

In Ottawa, Prime Minister R. B. Bennett gave a lunch for his Cabinet colleagues to meet the visitors. 'If, as I believe, Wesley saved England from the effects of the French Revolution,' he said on that occasion, 'so it is my abiding faith that the influences you so powerfully represent are the only ones that can save the world.'6

Professor Grensted joined the travellers during the Oxford Christmas vacation and embarked on a heavy programme of meeting his fellow theologians and psychologists. He wrote in his diary, 'Toronto - In the afternoon, interviews; one of them well worth all the time and cost of coming. This evening three meetings, and at least 3,000 people to hear our very simple story. Each of us spoke three times, and I, at least, began to know the curious clarity that lies beyond weariness. But what a need there is, and how patiently these people listen and look for help! The lounge of the hotel is full, after meetings, of groups talking on and on... At tea I was supposed to meet a few psychologists and found the whole department had arrived. They seemed to know how but not why. And clearly they thought me an interesting exhibit....

'Hamilton, Ontario - Things moved well, as always, with the clergy, where I was led to proclaim with vigour and emphasis against the opinions of the local psychiatrist who had raised his head against us.... I write this at 2.00am, much delayed by letters. Also by the arrival of a leading Church paper full of attacks on the Group. It is curious how these attacks seem to be organised. The editor says he has waited to form a judgement until the arrival of the Group, and then reprints hostile attacks written weeks ago in an English paper. It is queer to read this attack, written by able people too, and then think of the steady stream of sober miracles going on under my very eyes. Just fear, I believe, lest young people should rise up and save the world. And the challenge to older folk who have not saved it. . . .'

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