'"Any person who already knows in the autumn what God wants him to do the following June is not living under the guidance of God," he replied. "And any person who is not living under God's guidance is no Christian." That hit home. I could think of no suitable reply. His words stayed with me, moving in my heart and mind in ever-growing circles.'

By next June Frau von Cramon's first two objections were unexpectedly removed. In May she was amazed to receive a letter from Buchman enclosing a return ticket to Oxford. Then, at exactly the time she was invited to travel, a scarlet fever epidemic closed her school for two weeks. She was a little ashamed of her third objection, and reasoned that she would at least be able to give those present a grounding in 'sound German-Evangelical pedagogy'.

This she did in a speech lasting an hour and a half, which caused almost all the audience but Buchman to leave the hall. She then told Buchman she must leave for home. 'Has God told you to leave?' he asked. She felt compelled to go to her room and try 'listening'. Only nonsense seemed to come. 'Genf- Geneva - Genève,' she wrote down, twice, and that was all. At tea she told this to Buchman, and repeated that she was leaving for Germany. He laughed and took from his pocket a printed invitation to League of Nations delegates to attend an Oxford Group meeting in Geneva in a week's time. Her name was on the list of those who would be there. 'God told us you would travel with us, but He always lets people do what they want. We'll take your name out,' he said. At that exact moment, Frau von Cramon was being paged with a telegram. It said, 'New case of scarlet fever. School remains closed. Return unnecessary.'

'My knees began to shake,' related Frau von Cramon. 'Could it be true that God really could speak to people? One week later I was standing on the platform in Geneva before the representatives of the League of Nations.'

By the time of her interview with Himmler, Frau von Cramon had worked with Buchman in a number of countries and had come to appreciate his concern for her own. His Swiss-German ancestry and his knowledge of the language - the only one other than English which he spoke - made him feel at home there. His early visit to von Bodelschwingh at Bethel had been one of the influences which led him to found the Overbrook hospice, and he had been in correspondence with the son, also Friedrich, since the father's death in 1910. During the 1914-18 war he had, at Mott's suggestion, visited Germans interned in India and Japan. After the Armistice, he had helped to feed needy students and families impoverished by war. In 1920 he wrote to Mrs Woolverton, 'The children are starving and dying. They have no cows or food to feed them with. I do not know when I have seen anything so pathetic.' This was when he had urged her to send three cows to Bethel.2

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