Barrett has never forgotten a journey around the Middle East with Buchman and a party of fifteen, who included an East London leader of the unemployed and two sisters of over eighty, Lady Antrim and Lady Minto, the latter a former Vicereine of India. Barrett was detailed to get the ladies to cut down the quantity of their bags as some of the journey was to be by air - something neither had previously experienced. He managed to reduce the number from twenty-seven to eighteen. Then he impressed on Lady Minto the need to be ready to be picked up in time to catch the boat train. 'Catch?' was the reply. 'I am accustomed to trains waiting for me!'

The journey continued through Europe and the Balkans to Cairo, while it became ever clearer to Barrett that, apart from Buchman who was otherwise engaged, he seemed the one practical person in the party. The handling of luggage, tickets and hotels, as well as Buchman's typing, all fell on him. Finally, in Cairo, Buchman found him in tears, an unprecedented event for a Scot like Barrett. Buchman did not apologise, though he was sympathetic and tried to mobilise help for him. 'But he had expected me to enlist it myself,' says Barrett.

When asked why he went on when the demands were often so unreasonable, Barrett replied, 'Buchman had such infinite expectations of you. It is a kind of compliment when someone inspires you to do more than you can possibly do. You felt his will was really given to God and he expected yours to be, so you did what was necessary without a murmur. Besides, you knew he was doing as much or more himself.’ 'Of course,' Barrett added, 'there were occasions when I should have said, "Look, Frank, this is ridiculous!" '

A principal reason why people like Barrett stayed with Buchman year after year was because they believed he was, in a very real sense, in touch with God. 'When you went in to see him in the early morning, the room sometimes seemed electric with the amount of thought he had been putting in,' Barrett says. Some trained observers, coming to him fresh, noticed this quality, and concluded that he was a mystic. Harold Begbie, one of the shrewdest political journalists of his day, commented, 'Fuller acquaintance with F.B. brings to one's mind the knowledge that, in spite of his boyish cheerfulness, he is of the house and lineage of all true mystics from Plotinus to Tolstoy.'13 Van Dusen, in his critical essay written some years after leaving Buchman's work, remarked on his 'vivid mysticism'.14 'It is impossible to understand Frank at all unless he is thought of as always in God's presence, listening for direction and accepting power,' wrote A. J. Russell.15

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