In fact, the British Embassy had once again reaffirmed on 1 May 1941 that all these British workers were in America with the knowledge and permission of the British government. After Pearl Harbor the British Ambassador ordered that no further statements should be made by any member of the Embassy staff as, by agreement between the Allied partners, the status of all British citizens in the United States was now an American matter. The American administration continued its policy of support for the Moral Re-Armament workers after this date.14

Elements in the press, however, reiterated charges back and forth across the Atlantic. Denials were ignored. When Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, made a surprise parachute visit to Britain, the American and Canadian press reported a 'confident announcement' by William Hillman, European editor of Collier's, that Hess was a follower of Buchman and had flown to England to make contact with the Oxford Group for the purpose of negotiating peace.15 Buchman was as surprised to read this as anyone else. Only the Allentown MorningCall printed his statement that he did not even know Hess.16

In the midst of these battles came a public statement by Sam Shoemaker, whose large parish house, attached to Calvary Church in New York, had been for fifteen years the home and office of Buchman's work in America. Shoemaker announced to the American17 and British press that he had decided to end his association with Buchman 'because certain policies and points of view have arisen in the development of moral re-armament about which we have had increasing misgivings'. He would not, according to the Daily Telegraph, say what these 'policies and points of view' were, but added, 'When the Oxford Group was, on its own definition, "a movement of vital personal religion working within the churches to make the principles of the New Testament practical as a working force today", we fully identified ourselves with it.'18 Shoemaker concluded by asking Buchman to remove all personal and Oxford Group material and personnel from Calvary House.

Logan Roots, the retired Primate of China, now working full-time with Buchman, gave his own explanation of this development. 'The simple issue', he said, 'is that Shoemaker has initiated a new parish policy whereby he felt the parish was the prime objective. Buchman, true to his twenty-year-old definition of the Oxford Group as a programme of life issuing in personal, social, racial, national and supernational change, felt the work could not be limited to the confines of a parish but must give itself and its work to every parish and every denomination, and that if the parish would rightly see it the Church could really be a focal centre to save the world.'19

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