They arrived at Mackinac on 13 September. They were Roland Wilson who, at the age of 32, had been left as Secretary of the Oxford Group in Britain when Buchman went to America six years earlier; Buchman's old friend Arthur Baker, chief of The Times parliamentary staff; Peter Howard, whom he had never met; George Light; and Andrew Strang, a whole-time worker with MRA who had been caught by German armies in Scandinavia and spent the war in detention camp. Buchman was ready an hour ahead to go and meet them. On the dock, sitting in his ramshackle carriage with Brooks, a friend's black chauffeur, beside him, he waited patiently, a curiously unpretentious figure. When finally the British arrived, Buchman introduced each to the head of the local ferry service before greeting them himself with tears in his eyes. The next day turned into a combined meeting and large family party.

Another visitor from Europe was a Dutch Catholic priest, sent by his Archbishop to 'observe' Buchman's work. On his way he had allowed himself to be trapped by a reporter into making some rather sweeping statements about Moral Re-Armament, and some of those at Mackinac regarded him with veiled suspicion. After he had been there about a week Buchman called in a few of his friends and said that he felt Father Frits should lead the morning meeting. They all raised objections. Would he want to speak? What would he say? Who would he get to speak with him? But Buchman held to his thought, and in the end a number of his colleagues met with Father Frits and suggested he might speak.

'Yes,' said the Father, 'I have things I would like to say.'

'We thought you might lead the meeting,' they added.

'Well, I don't know about that, but we can ask God.'

So, after a song from the Mackinac Singers, Father Frits began: 'I thought I would say things just out of my heart, very simple things. My heart tells me to, and my reason tells me not to. As I am trained to let reason prevail, it is difficult for me.

'When the bishop speaks we obey. I assure you it was not in a very nice spirit that I agreed to come. On first coming I tried to be an honest Catholic onlooker. You simply can't look on here. Soon I felt utterly humble and ashamed. For my impression is that this is a great school of love. You cannot resist it. The first thing I did when I went to confession on Sunday was to make a resolution to imitate the quality of life I had seen.

'I am convinced people like you can play an immense part in the unification of all Christians. Charity always unites. Never have I seen it more clearly than in this place. I had expected, maybe, not to hear Christ's name mentioned as it should be. But it was not true. I found here the real living of the mystery of Christ.'4*

(* Father Frits, Frederic van der Meer, later dedicated his book Augustine the Bishop (Sheed and Ward, 1961) to Bernard Hallward.)

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