The Swiss who had come over made what was perhaps to prove the most far-reaching decision of all. Their time at Mackinac crystallised in their minds the idea that Europe needed a similar centre where some of the wounds of the continent might be healed. And where better than in Switzerland? This idea had originated, the previous year, with Philippe Mottu, who was working in the Swiss Foreign Office. It worked powerfully in two young engineers, Robert Hahnloser and Erich Peyer, who accompanied Mottu on this, his second visit. The three of them went back to Switzerland to start turning dream into reality.

From Mackinac Buchman and two hundred others, including many from Europe, returned through Minnesota to Seattle. En route Buchman took his friends to see the home and grave of his uncle, Aaron Greenwalt, who died in the Civil War. Then he obtained special permission to take them through Yellowstone Park in winter, where they saw elk, deer, buffalo and mountain sheep. Buchman was, as ever, an eager sightseer, and spotted the sheep before the forest ranger with whom he was driving.

In Seattle it was probably a sign of his returning strength that Buchman was seized with impatience at what seemed to him inadequate and unimaginative planning. True, Dave Beck of the Teamsters was putting Buchman and others of the party up at the Olympic Hotel,* but there were no plans to see Beck or to 'personalise' the city. 'It was one of those days when everything went wrong or felt as if it did,' reads his secretary's diary. 'One by one we were mowed down by his wrath...Frank moved quietly like an avenging thunder cloud among the faithful.' Next day, 'A few rifts appeared in the clouds of yesterday, but they swiftly passed and Frank was greatly dissatisfied. We all walked, like Agag, delicately...The fight to meet the Governor, Mayor and Dave Beck began to be carried to a successful issue. The Mayor agreed to see twenty of the team tomorrow, but Frank forcibly pointed out that there were 200 and he should see all of them.'5

(* Beck had asked the hotel manager for ten double rooms. 'Very difficult, Mr Beck,' the manager replied. 'I wouldn't ask you personally unless it was very difficult; if it was easy I'd get someone else to do it,' said Beck. He got them.)

Buchman was now using six plays, ringing the changes at will. They had been raised to a high standard of performance through the participation of professionals, now turned whole-time workers, like Phyllis Konstam, Marion Clayton and her husband Bob Anderson, Cece Broadhurst, Howard Reynolds and others. They were accompanied by the Mackinac Singers under the leadership of the Edinburgh musician, George Fraser. Peter Howard often introduced the plays, and sometimes there were speakers afterwards. In one city, under Buchman's personal drilling, twenty-seven spoke in twenty-two minutes.

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