The event was used by some of Buchman's critics to try and drive a wedge between him and his considerable support in the Church - and, in some cases, this succeeded. It also gave any who found the current press campaign against Buchman hard to bear an easy way of dropping their connection with him, even if that was not Shoemaker's intention. It did not alter Buchman's own relationship with the Church in any way. 'I believe with all my heart in the Church, the Church aflame, on fire with revolution,' he said two years later.23

The battles being fought round Buchman and Moral Re-Armament embarrassed but did not prevent the progress of the You Can Defend America programme across America. The play had made a long tour through the South and up through the Middle West to Detroit via Cleveland, Ohio, where it was shown for the Annual Convention of the Steelworkers of America. Philip Murray, the craggy, Scots-born leader of the CI0, spoke after the performance there: 'It exemplifies the spirit and the kind of unity for which America is looking.'24

In Detroit it played to 5,000 people a night. The first rush of patriotic response after Pearl Harbor, resulting in increased industrial production, was dying down. The brunt of the war burden was falling upon industry, which was divided by deep ideological disputes. Nearly every major union meeting was a pitched battle between the Communists demanding a Second Front in Europe at once and trying thereby to obtain control of the union, and the Socialists trying to prevent this and restrict discussions to industrial matters.

Buchman believed that 'total victory means we must win the war of arms and also the war of ideas'. 'Both', he remarked, 'are being fought right here in Detroit. The war can be lost or won in Detroit.' Henry Ford was his host in the city over Buchman's birthday in June. He had Buchman and a number of his colleagues staying as his guests at the Dearborn Inn, and he and Mrs Ford were at a large birthday lunch in the Ford Museum at Greenfield Village and several times saw You Can Defend America. Having finally decided to go into the production of aeroplanes, Ford was building up his vast Willow Run plant. Buchman wondered how such organising genius could become equally effective in the war of ideas. 'How can we set up an assembly line to produce men who know how to work together, who can cure bitterness, increase production and supply the imagination for a new world to be born?' he wrote to Ford. 'Where can we find the place to build the Willow Run to produce the ideas that will answer the "isms"? We have re-tooled our industries to meet a national emergency. With the same speed and thoroughness we must re-tool our thinking and living to meet a changing world.’25

306

Photo: Buchman (centre) with Mr and Mrs Henry Ford. Buchman asked them where an assembly line of ideas to meet the world's needs could be based. Mrs Ford suggested Mackinac Island.
©Arthur Strong/MRA Productions