After the weekend Buchman wrote to his host, 'You must have the sense of "Well done, good and faithful servant." Certainly the hours at Hatfield were God-controlled. I do not know when I have ever felt so absolutely encased by the presence of the unseen, ever-present Christ.

'The influence of that weekend, I am convinced, will go far beyond our ken. With so much happening in thirty-six hours, you can readily understand what the impact must have been on Norway where we met together for ten days. In our contact with these men we ought always to keep in the forefront of our minds that we are only at the beginning.

'I think we must say this too: we can never be grateful enough to the good God who led you to plan as you did for men whose insight and creative ability can make a God-controlled England. Laus Deo!'24

To which Salisbury replied, 'I have just received your letter. May I tell you how very grateful I am to you for all you arranged and carried out here during the weekend? I have now read with deep reverence the words you have used as to the impression left upon your mind by what passed, and of course I feel that we must wait for the future of the Movement with hope and faith. I will say no more for the present.'25

Lord Robert Cecil said during the Hatfield weekend that 'every problem in Europe today could be traced back to the failure of Christian- ity to influence the Governments of the nations'.26 According to Kenneth Rose in The Later Cecils, he 'congratulated the Group on having "invested the old, simple Christ gospel with a new vividness particularly effective with people who have lost or never knew it". But at the final session he was disturbed by Buchman's apparent readiness to condone the conduct of the Hitler regime: "I rather warmly protested," Bob told his wife, "and he explained that he was far from approving such things as the persecution of the Jews."'27

It is likely that Buchman did express himself strongly about Germany in a gathering where some seemed to assume that Germany was totally to blame and Britain had made no errors. 'Buchman always found it very hard to bear the arrogance of certain of us British who felt the British Empire was better than anything else anywhere,' Loudon Hamilton once noted. 'He was very sensitive to national superiority in us. If we criticised other countries, he wouldn't allow it. He was fighting for cure and part of the cure was that we had to begin with ourselves.'

Salisbury's summary of the discussion on Germany reads: 'Nothing like the dazzling Scandinavian results were claimed in Germany, but a good deal of success was described in certain localities and amongst certain individuals - even individuals high in the public life of the Country. It was thought, I think, generally very difficult to reconcile the recent practice of the Government in Germany with the teaching of the New Testament, and the principles of the Group, and obviously any tendency to condone evil even for so signal an object as getting in touch with the German Government would be wholly unworthy. I need not say that any such "doing evil that good may come" was warmly denied.'28

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