Buchman kept in touch with his friends in Washington. Truman, in his position as chairman of the Senate Committee investigating war contracts, had during the past four years demanded and obtained a high standard of honesty which had saved the nation billions of dollars. In 1943 he, Admiral Byrd, Congressman Wadsworth and other political, business and labour figures signed the foreword to a report on the industrial work of Moral Re-Armament.* Truman told a Washington press conference, 'Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks...these problems, to which the Moral Re-Armament programme is finding an effective solution, are the most urgent of any in our whole production picture . . . What we now need is a fighting faith which will last twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and fifty-two weeks a year . . . This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Where others have stood back and criticised, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. They have already achieved remarkable results in bringing teamwork into industry, on the principles not of "who's right" but of "what's right".'5

(* The Fight to Serve (Moral Re-Armament, 1943). Other signatories included the Vice-President of Cramp Shipbuilding, Vice-Presidents of the AFL and CIO, and the previous year's President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.)

Truman, with Congressman Wadsworth, attended a showing of The Forgotten Factor at Philadelphia in November. There he added, 'If America does not catch this spirit, we shall be lucky to win the war and certain to lose the peace. With it there is no limit to what we can do for America and America for the world.'6

Truman and Wadsworth sent a thousand personal letters inviting the political and military leadership of America to a showing of The Forgotten Factor at the National Theater in Washington on 14 May 1944. To prepare for this showing Buchman went to Washington. He concentrated now on getting all the arrangements for this performance perfect, including the play itself, every detail of which interested him. As he was watching a late rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance word was brought to him that the father of one of the backstage crew, Jim Cooper from Scotland, had died. He immediately met Cooper in a room in the theatre and told him the news. He asked him how his mother would manage financially, and told him about the death of his own father and the certainty of life after death which it had confirmed in him. He then abandoned the much-anticipated public event, took Cooper home for supper and spent the evening with him.

324