Lord Grey came closer than Rose to expressing the hopes which both Salisbury and Buchman held for the Hatfield weekend when he wrote about it to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 'I was at Jem's house party last weekend and like everybody else, I think, very much impressed by what I heard,' he wrote. 'You know much more what he is thinking than I do, but I imagine that he is principally attracted by what might happen if we could get a great release of spiritual forces in Europe within the next two or three years, such a release as could not be expected to be achieved through the ordinary channels.'37

Buchman's hope was precisely for such a release of spiritual energy in Europe, not only because it just might avert catastrophe but, more importantly, for its own sake. This is clear from Salisbury's comment that Buchman at Hatfield called for 'a vital, even a revolutionary change' in the lives of those present, whether already 'professed Christians' or not. Buchman felt that such a release of spiritual energy would require the same kind of national response in Britain as he had seen in Norway and Denmark, and he was looking for public figures prepared to take the same whole-hearted leadership as Hambro and others had taken in Norway and Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard and Dean Brodersen in Denmark.

But, for whatever reason, Buchman did not feel that most of those at Hatfield had accepted this point. Hence the wistful reference in his letter to Salisbury to the ten days' house-party of the Norwegian campaign in contrast to the thirty-six hours at Hatfield, and his insistence that 'we ought always to have it in the forefront of our minds that we are only at the beginning'. To Twitchell in London, he wrote in mid-November, 'I don't think I would count too exclusively on the senior crowd as the salvation of Britain, because they have too many irons in the fire. They have become old and hardened in their processes and ways of doing things and while one must be grateful for their approval of the work, with a few exceptions, I doubt whether we will have much action.'38

He was writing from Budapest, where he had found twenty Groups functioning. There, as in Vienna, he had met the country's Chancellor and members of the Cabinet. 'We have failed,' he noted at the time, 'in the articulation so that the scope is adequate to challenge every statesman ... the sin of not putting a message that is understandable by everyone.' And again, 'Events are hurtling on and the balance is between war and no war within the next three years. Can we be the deciding factor? All the time there comes in these quiet hours the thought, "You will be used to change the world." I sometimes feel it too much to believe that the Oxford Group can be used to change the world, but unless we work with that object we might just as well fold our hands and rest.'

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