SCHUMAN AND ADENAUER

How then can Buchman's contribution to the reconciliation between Germany and France be summarised? First, it appears to be beyond dispute that, as the official Bulletin stated, he 'brought Germany back into the circle of civilised nations' - and, in so doing, reconciled German leaders with their opposite numbers in France and other European countries. Secondly, the work of Moral Re-Armament in the Ruhr and in French industry was an essential prerequisite to the uniting of the French and German coal and steel industries. Thirdly, Buchman's friendship with Adenauer, Schuman and other leading figures played a real, if unquantifiable, part in easing the negotiating process.

Yet, for Buchman himself, all this was a by-product of the work which he felt that God had laid upon him with individuals. When, on one occasion, a letter of praise reached him from Adenauer, he said to his friends, 'I am dumb-struck', and when he was decorated with the Order of Merit he accepted it 'mindful that it is an honour shared by every man and woman who played a part'.55

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