When asked for a theme for the page on Sweden in the pictorial Rising Tide published that spring, Blomberg thought of the Swedish steel going to all the nations of Europe for their armaments and wrote, 'Sweden - the reconciler of the nations. We must rearm morally.'

Buchman received the Swedish edition of Rising Tide while spending a few days quietly in the Black Forest in Freudenstadt. Walking one afternoon in the Forest and preparing for his next moves in Britain, Blomberg's thought returned repeatedly to him, and with unusual force:

'Moral and spiritual re-armament. Moral and spiritual re-armament. The next great move in the world will be a movement of moral re-armament for all nations.'

Buchman was due to make a speech in East Ham Town Hall in London a few days later. Bill Jaeger's work in East London had been growing and penetrating the civic life of the area, to the point of becoming a steadying factor in districts where Fascists and their opponents were clashing in the streets. The attitude displayed by one Council member resulted in his becoming known in his borough as 'the councillor with the changed face'. He apologised to the Mayor, to whom he had not spoken for twenty years because of bitterness originating in a policy difference. 'Either something's gone radically wrong with him or something's gone positively right,' commented the Mayor, and soon afterwards fifteen Councillors of different parties issued a statement saying, 'An entirely new spirit of co-operation has come into our work as a Local Authority. This has resulted in a considerable saving of time in reaching decisions.'4

The effect of the Oxford Group in East London caught the attention of certain national labour leaders. A group of them had met several times to hear about it under the chairmanship of H. H. Elvin, Chairman of the Trades Union Congress in 1937-8. 'Why don't I have the power to change people like this?' the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons asked on one of these occasions. Now several mayors in the area were hosting a meeting of 3,000 to hear Buchman, who took this opportunity to launch Moral Re-Armament.

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