The debate next day in the House of Lords, initiated by Lord Salisbury, was calmer. Concern was expressed that the Moral Re-Armament workers had been treated hardly less arbitrarily than they would have been in a totalitarian state. Every speaker, except the Government spokesman and one other, deplored Bevin's decision. The Times stated in its editorial next morning, 'It is impossible to think that the Minister has handled wisely or prudently a case which, rejected out of hand, was bound to arouse deep and sincere feeling going far beyond its immediate bounds.'11

Bevin's decision, however, was not reversed. The men now remaining were taken into the armed forces, though because of the need for firemen during the blitz some were able to opt for the National Fire Service in London, permitting them to continue their MRA work in their hours off duty.

Gusts from the Parliamentary storm crossed the Atlantic and epithets like 'pro-Nazi' used in the Commons debate now made their appearance there. So did Driberg, who spent six months that summer and autumn touring America, during which he prosecuted his campaign against Buchman with the newspaper editors who were his hosts. A fresh crop of rumours spread through the country. In particular, a nationally circulated news sheet, In Fact, reprinted many attacks on Moral Re-Armament and so spread them to the major American newspapers.

The Selective Service headquarters asked what lay behind these rumours. A memorandum submitted by Moral Re-Armament in answer read in part: 'We have known for some time that attempts were being made to influence adversely high Washington officials. In November (1941) we were told that a British newspaperman long unfriendly to us had been in this country and was gaining the ear of important officials to prejudice them against Moral Re-Armament. Our informant told us that while he personally had been able to counter successfully this man's efforts in the case of one important official, the newspaperman's strategy was to get the ear of the President, but that, as far as he knew, he only got as far as the President's Press Secretary, Stephen Early.'12

Early had been sent a telegram by the editor of the Bangor Daily News,asking whether Roosevelt had 'specifically endorsed' Moral Re- Armament, to which he had replied that there had been no 'specific endorsement'. When he heard of the use the paper had made of this telegram, Early again telegraphed the editor, 'I exceedingly regret that this telegram has been used to impugn the motives of those associated with the Oxford Group for Moral Re-Armament. Had I believed my telegram would have been used in this way, I certainly would not have answered the telegraphic enquiry I received from you to which my message was in acknowledgement.'13 Similarly, an official of the New York Selective Service was reprimanded by Washington when he passed on to the American press, in his official capacity, statements derived from the London Daily Mirror which had now begun to accuse the British men working with Moral Re-Armament in America of being 'draft dodgers'.

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