In Burma he had received an SOS from Queen Sophie in Rome. 'The atmosphere in the family here is rather troubled and all wrong and in my distress I thought I would turn to you first of all to ask for your prayers and then advice and help.'23 In Rome he spent much time with her and the younger members of her family, as well as several days with Queen Olga, 'a marvellous Christian who has seen much sorrow'. He was extremely tired, but on receiving a rather desperate invitation from Queen Marie of Romania,24 he left for Bucharest where she asked him if he would stay a month. 'Don't leave me,' she begged. 'I can't speak to anyone else.' But Buchman could only manage two weeks. The Queen wrote of him 'spreading his kind, uniting atmosphere over us all'.25 Back in London he found the head-waiter, housekeeper and manager of Brown's Hotel waiting up for him, and sat talking to them until almost one in the morning.

The rest of the summer was no less hectic. There were two house-parties at Rhederoord, several visits to Germany, a brief visit to Allentown for his mother's memorial service during which his old college, Muhlenberg, conferred on him an honorary Doctorate of Divinity, and lunch with Archbishop Söderblom of Sweden at Brown's Hotel in London. Queen Olga died in July and he went to her funeral.

Back in London he ran into concerted opposition. 'Damnable undermining on the part of a well-known group of homosexuals has begun on one of our younger converts who has been going along splendidly,' he wrote to Day in September. 'They called for him in a luxurious motor at eleven o'clock at night. They took him to fly in an aeroplane. When they saw they could not seduce him, they asked him to sleep with one of the well-known political mistresses in London. When this was refused, he was accused of having slept with another fellow. Can you beat it?'26

In the years since he had left China, he had encountered many people whose lives were governed by their homosexual tendencies. Two men who had attended one of his house-parties in Surrey, for example, had been 'flagrantly troubled with it'. 'They are hard and difficult but unconvincing,' Buchman noted. 'I intend to follow a fearless programme, combined with charity, which considers one's self lest one also be tempted, and thus forge a message for myself and others that will transform lives.'

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