Such inconsistency was doubtless the result of the editorial and the report being the work of different hands. The reporter was Tom Driberg, later chairman of the Labour Party, who had recently left Christ Church without a degree but with an exciting reputation for black magic parties and had joined the Daily Express on a trial basis.

Driberg followed up with a second piece the next day. 'Members of the new cult', he wrote, 'hold hands in a large circle and, one after another, apparently "inspired", make a full confession of his sins.'4 Again no confessor was named or actual confession quoted.

An (unnamed) college head, he added, had told him that 'this indiscriminate divulging of one's feelings must certainly produce a kind of thrill among the listeners, which can scarcely be described by any other word than sensual'. It was, the college head was reported to have said, 'a morbid sensualism masquerading under the guise of religion'.

Given the nature of those supposed to be involved, the story sounds unlikely to say the least. The idea of the university boxing captain holding hands with a bunch of rowing men requires a considerable leap of imagination.* Driberg continued. 'American undergraduates here declared that the authorities of Princeton University, where the movement is reported to have originated, stopped it as soon as they learned of its existence.'

(* Thornton-Duesbery comments: 'The articles do not state that the writer heard any such confessions, nor does he give a single name of anyone who so confessed or who claimed to have heard such confessions. No doubt, as a good journalist, he would have done so if he could. He could not because such things did not happen. I was present at virtually all these Oxford meetings, and no one held hands, nor were there any unsavoury or emotional confessions by undergraduates.' (The Open Secret of MRA, Blandford, 1964, pp. 10-11.)

The third article, next day, was less sensational, possibly because four Oxford men had waited on the editor of the paper and demanded more accurate reporting.5

On the following Sunday, at the suggestion of the Revd Graham Brown, the meeting was moved from the Randolph Hotel to St Mary's, the University Church, and the Daily Express smugly reported that, due to their publicity, the Randolph ballroom was now too small.6 Two contemporary letters to Buchman add some interesting background. 'The writer of the scurrilous articles in the Express last week,' reported the first, 'turned up last night with some 20 odd fellows from Christ Church headed by one who used to be at Princeton with the hope he could disturb the meeting. They did not realise it had been moved to St Mary's.' Finding the ballroom empty, they threw a few chairs about and departed. A later report added, 'Some of the men responsible for these articles have come into the group and told us of the half-cynical, prankish frame of mind which combined with fertile imaginations to produce them,' and stated that one of the undergraduates concerned had brought with him to the non-existent meeting a highly coloured account of its proceedings and of how they had broken it up in disgust.7

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