'The effect was stunning,' writes Reginald Hale. 'Shock, outrage, anger showed on many faces. Frank passed on to his room leaving consternation behind him. Supper that night was a subdued meal and many were strangely silent.'13

People had been brought face to face with Christ's command, 'Love your enemies.' Many found the power to do so. Then the technical difficulties had to be faced and overcome. No Germans were allowed to leave their country without Allied permission, and few, if any, had the means to do so if permitted. Work with the Allied authorities was immediately initiated, and sixteen Germans, including Moni von Cramon and the widows of two men executed for taking part in the plot to kill Hitler, arrived that first year.

The inherent difficulties of this operation were revealed even in the attitude of some of Moni von Cramon’s non-German friends from the pre-war years, who went so far as to ask Buchman to send her away from Caux as she was ‘no longer trustworthy’. Instead he took her with him to Locarno when he went there from Caux for a rest, as always with a group of colleagues. “There,’ according to Frau von Cramon’s daughter, ‘everything blew up. Frank listened to it all, and then sat silent. Then he said, “Feed her, clothe her, love her.” And a Swiss friend took her home and took care of her.’

All the rooms at Caux were full for two months, many of the visitors being workers and their leaders, most numerous among them British coal-miners who had established a special fund for the purpose.

On 22 October The Forgotten Factor opened at the Westminster Theatre. To begin with, Buchman sat in a box each evening, watching not the play but the audience. Busloads of miners came from several coalfields, as well as managers and, after the nationalization of the mines at the beginning of 1947, Coal Board officials. That winter in Britain was the coldest for sixty years and 8,000,000 extra tons of coal were needed. Acknowledgements of the effect of the play began to flow in. Tom Collier, the Coal Board's Area Labour Officer for North Staffordshire, said at a meeting in the Westminster Theatre on 11 May, 'If the Coal Board would send this play round the country, their problems would be at an end. A week ago I told our people that with the help of the spirit of this play the five-day week* would succeed...Now, in five days, more coal has come from the pits than in any other week for many years.'* Speaking with Collier was Harold Heath, Union Committee member at Chatterley Whitfield Pit, the fifth largest in Britain. 'We hit our six-day target in four and a half days,' he said. 'A thousand of our men saw The Forgotten Factor last week.'

(* An experimental replacement for the six-day week.)

(* cf. Birmingham Post, 12 May 1947: 'Five-Day Week Brings More Coal in Four Areas: North Staffordshire Pits Lead the Coalfields'.)

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