Any examination of the lives of many of these intellectual Communists does much to indicate Buchman's belief that 'moral Bolshevism' among the intelligentsia, like the right-wing materialism of which he had warned the Sao Paulo business men, was an important factor in moving people towards Communism. The story is told in autobiography after autobiography. 'I was ripe for conversion because of my personal case-history,' wrote Arthur Koestler. 'Thousands of other members of the intelligentsia and the middle classes of my generation were ripe by virtue of their own case-histories: but, however much these differed from case to case, they had one common denominator: the rapid disintegration of moral values.'5

In Oxford at that time advocacy of such moral relativism was an active element in Communist propaganda. Hugh Elliott of Hertford College, a friend of the founder of the October Club, says, 'We met the Hunger Marchers on their way to London, sang the Internationale with them and bitterly criticised the Government's policy of "safety first". In the October Club we discussed a new social order. I began to question all my basic beliefs. A distinguished gynaecologist came to lecture to a mixed and packed audience. He told us we were all suffering from inhibitions about sex. Free love was both natural and normal. Many of my friends went the whole way with his teachings, Later, I saw real tragedy in their lives and understood the connection between discarding moral standards and the acceptance of the Communist ideology, which was the lecturer's frank intention. Myself, I hesitated...'

It was at that moment that Elliott met the Oxford Group. 'My friend who had introduced me to the October Club won my respect by his dedication,' Elliott continues, 'but I saw in those who worked with Buchman a greater dedication and self-discipline. They were so genuine. What they started in Oxford aroused a lot of controversy, but could not be talked down, and I joined them.'

Buchman and his colleagues did not decry Communism or support any other political tendency. They simply set before people uncompromising standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love, and stated that God had a plan for the world - and for each person individually - which each could find and with which each could co-operate. Buchman asserted, though there was little contemporary evidence to back the assertion, that if they fully committed their lives to God they would, in the future, see transformations in social and national affairs around them.

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