Austin's first thought was to mobilise sportsmen behind Moral Re-Armament. Hence their letter to The Times. With George Eyston, the racing motorist, he spoke to 58,000 spectators at half-time in the Arsenal v Chelsea match, introduced by the Arsenal coach George Allison. Similar action was taken elsewhere in the country. Then Austin produced a book containing the calls for Moral Re-Armament in various countries, together with vivid personal stories by himself, the unemployed leader Bill Rowell, and others. Work on the book began on 1 December; it was printed and on the bookstalls on 14 December. 'I was used to moving with speed on a tennis court,' remarks Austin; 'I was not used to moving with this speed off it! The book sold rapidly. It was advertised on ten thousand posters up and down the country, donated by the advertising agencies. The first edition of 250,000 soon sold out. The second quarter of a million were printed.'31 To advertise the book, the MRA symbol was printed on millions of milk-bottle tops.

Moral Re-Armament, Archbishop Lang said in his New Year broadcast, had 'caught on across Britain'. But it had not been without its struggles. Bill Jaeger reported from East London: 'Will Jacob (a Labour Party agent), Councillor George Moncar and Councillor Mrs Brignell were brought before their Ward Committee on a motion that they could not be in the Labour Party and the Oxford Group at the same time...the motion was defeated by eight votes to six. Tod Sloan was recently waylaid outside his home by three Communist Party leaders and told what they thought of him for an hour and a half.'32

Moral Re-Armament was also, according to Buchman, meeting 'persistent opposition from certain conventional religious people'. The opposition was focussed round 'phraseology', the objection being that the letters in the press did not mention the name of Christ sufficiently. To one old friend who raised these criticisms, Buchman wrote, 'I fear your informants have not grasped the truth that lies behind MRA... Take the close of the Baldwin letter: who does "His Will" refer to but Christ? After all, who rearms us? We have got to remember, however, that if we are going to reach statesmen, we have got to put our truth in the language of statesmen. The Christian standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love - these are the foundation stones of the state . . . Now, for a man to be honest is not all the gospel - that is true - but it is a place where certain people can begin and where certain nations have to begin if they are to challenge the thinking of the world.'33

As the campaign strengthened and the weeks passed, the American press took an increasing interest. 'In America, the beginnings of the recognition of the need of moral rearmament are to be noted,' wrote David Lawrence, editor of United States News* 'But in Great Britain the movement has reached proportions which are truly sensational.'34 Invitations to launch Moral Re-Armament more widely in America came from many sources. A group of Congressmen cabled: 'Washington responsive to Moral Re-Armament. Growing interest here in British experience with MRA .. .'35 Later, a staff writer of the Saturday Evening Post even wrote that it was 'probably true that, as much as any other agency, Moral Re-Armament had advanced the programme of England's military preparedness on the non-military side. To it is due an important part of the credit that, since Munich, British morale has improved at least as fast as Britain's fighting machine.'36

(* Later US News and World Report.)

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