Buchman set out for the second conference, at Peitaiho, knowing that he had left turmoil behind him. He sensed that a storm was brewing, while not suspecting that Blackstone, whose letters were friendly, was stirring it up.

In fact Blackstone, newly arrived from Japan, wrote from Peitaiho a confidential letter to Bishop Roots, the Chairman of the China Continuation Committee, who was now back in Hankow. He had heard, he said, that the Kuling conference had been a great blessing. On the other hand, a few things he had been told about Buchman's relation to the conference had raised serious questions in his mind as to the advisability of Buchman doing any further work in China for the moment.

'It has long been apparent to me', Blackstone went on, 'that there were certain disqualifications in Mr Buchman in the line of egoism, selfishness and extravagance, and yet ... I have stood behind him with all my strength, sometimes even against my own judgment and the opinion of others.'

Blackstone asked Roots whether he felt Buchman's work in China was finished for the present, and whether he thought something had come into Buchman's personal experience which was a hindrance to his message. 'I may say', remarked Blackstone, 'that there is a serious gloom cast over this conference because of his present condition, and I hardly find him to be the same man whom I left in the spring.' Could Roots please send his reply by telegram?8

The following night there seems to have been a noisy confrontation between Buchman and the other conference organisers on the porch of Blackstone's bungalow. The immediate issue was probably a complaint that Buchman was behaving as if he were running the conference single-handed. In any event, he said something which 'grieved' Tewksbury, and told Ruth Paxson in the heat of the moment that he never took orders from a woman. Nor did he feel able to agree to three points which the others put to him, more or less as an ultimatum. One was apparently that the word 'sin' should no longer be mentioned.9 Another was a demand to return to the 'old meeting plan'. Tewksbury accused him of 'egotism', to which he replied that most of his message was derived from Henry Wright.*

(* Three weeks later Buchman wrote to Wright: 'I am experiencing what you forecast - persecution. Much of the best of my message is yours…. You come nearer than any other man in the sphere of my acquaintance (to the one) who actually incarnates the principles of Christ' (20 September 1918). Professor Wright's influence on Buchman is discussed in Chapter 8.)

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