'WHERE ARE THE GERMANS?'

Before leaving for a campaign in Northern Ireland with The Forgotten Factor Buchman also visited Cambridge and Oxford, where he heard the Master of St Peter's Hall state in the University Sermon, 'During the last twenty-five years there has been going out from Oxford not only a Christian ideology, but men and women fired with the conception of remaking the world.'1The student magazine, Isis, had already produced an editorial for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Buchman's first coming to Oxford. 'Our interest in the Oxford Group is aroused', it said, 'because we feel their opponents, so vitriolic and yet so vague, have held the floor too long and failed to substantiate their charges...Certainly Oxford has no need to be ashamed of any real spiritual crusade that she fosters - she has nursed many in her time and, indeed, what could be more fitting for a University with the motto Dominus Illuminatio Mea?2

The old opponents, Tom Driberg and A. P. (now Sir Alan) Herbert, were soon in the field. Two days after Buchman's arrival Driberg, speaking in the House of Commons, criticised the Home Secretary, Chuter Ede, for permitting 'this man, who has never repudiated his expressed admiration of Hitler and deceived the public by putting false entries into Who's Who,* to enter the country. This was dismissed by the Home Secretary with the words, '"The wind bloweth where it listeth"; I am not prepared to put any obstruction in the way.' Driberg then gave notice that he would raise the matter 'on the adjournment'.3

(* Buchman's alleged falsification of Who's Who is examined in detail in J.P. Thornton-Duesbery’s The Open Secret of MRA, pp. 82-3. The main charge was that Buchman had stated that he studied at Cambridge University, 1921-22, and that this was inaccurate, because Westminster College, where Buchman was received at that time as a guest in the Senior Common Room, was not technically a part of the University but an independent Presbyterian theological college. 'Even so,' Driberg later stated, 'the entry might have been justifiable if Buchman attended University lectures: Herbert ascertained from the University authorities that he never asked permission to do so.' (Driberg: The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament, p. 51.) This was, of course, because Buchman was invited personally by Professor Oman to attend his lectures at the request of Principal Mackenzie of Hartford Seminary. Buchman did attend Oman's lectures. (see p. 91.)

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