'NORWAY ABLAZE - DENMARK SHAKEN'

When Buchman returned from Canada in June 1934, with Hitler in power and his own work in Germany growing too slowly to affect events, he was looking for a way to bring spiritual leverage on Germany - as well as upon Britain - from outside. He knew that the Scandinavian countries possessed a special Nordic prestige in Germany and were respected in Britain. News of a Christian revolution there might carry more weight in both countries than similar tidings from elsewhere. 'The policy of striking in Scandinavia last year,' he wrote to Sir Lynden Macassey in May 1935, 'was with the hope that the whole continent of Europe would be influenced and find a true answer through the dictatorship of the living Spirit of God.'1*

(* The Gestapo themselves thought this a sound strategy. 'Everything Scandinavian has a good name in Germany,' their report of 1936 stated. 'If Oxford (i.e. the Oxford Group) comes with tall blond Scandinavians of the saint Lutheran upbringing, the movement will more easily find entry to the neighbouring countries to the south.' (Leitheft Die Oxfordoder Gruppenbewegung herausgegeben vom Sicherheitshauptamt, November 1936, Geheim, Numeriertes Exemplar No. 1, Documents Centre, Berlin, p. 10, quoting from Nordschleswig’sche Korrespondenz, 19 November 1935.)

Whether this was, in fact, a wholly deliberate plan, as implied in the letter to Macassey, or one which evolved through taking advantage of unexpected developments in certain people and was then perceived in hindsight - or a combination of both - is an open question.

One evening back in the spring of 1931 Buchman had dined beside Mrs Alexander Whyte, the elderly widow of a once-famous Edinburgh preacher. He asked her what was her greatest concern.

'I'm preparing to die,' she replied.

'Why not prepare to live?' he suggested.

They talked of the chaos in the world. She told him how she had first heard of his work in Shanghai and later in South Africa. Then she spoke of her hopes for the League of Nations where her son, Sir Frederick Whyte, was an economic expert.

Some months later, at the Oxford house-party, Mrs Whyte rose to her feet and said that someone should take a team to Geneva. When she insisted a second time, Buchman said, in a characteristic phrase, ‘fine, you do it!’ She booked a hundred rooms in Geneva, and Buchman set about getting together a suitable team. In January 1932 they stayed ten days in Geneva and met a number of delegates and officials; and this led to an invitation to address a luncheon of League personalities in September 1933.

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