A Lille industrialist, Louis Boucquey, had first interested Schuman in Moral Re-Armament. He had met the then Prime Minister during a train journey and told him that industry in Northern France was working better, with closer relationships between labour and management, an improvement which he attributed to the change at Caux in Irène Laure and Robert Tilge, the Secretary of the regional employers, and the Moral Re-Armament assembly they had held at Le Touquet the previous autumn. At the end of the journey, Schuman said, 'Keep me in touch. I would like to meet this Dr Buchman.'

When he met Buchman, Schuman was Foreign Minister and involved in an extremely tense European situation. In protest against the reform of the German currency, Russia had blockaded Berlin. The Western Allies were replying with an airlift of food, fuel and all necessary supplies - a demonstration of their joint determination to carry through the economic rehabilitation of Germany - which lasted nearly ten months. During the early days of the blockade, Buchman wrote to Schuman, 'The country is safe in your hands. I do covet the opportunity of your coming to us at Caux.'26

Instead of Schuman there came to Caux on 11 September a man still comparatively unknown outside Germany, Dr Konrad Adenauer, who had recently become President of the Parliamentary Council of the three Western zones. Invited by one of his Christian Democrat party colleagues who had been at Caux in 1947, Adenauer arrived with most of his family and two secretaries. He listened, met many delegates and saw The Forgotten Factor. After the play he spoke to an audience which included President Enrico Celio of Switzerland. 'I have been here two days. I have attended meetings. I have spoken to people. I have observed very carefully and pondered my impressions,' he said. 'I admit that I came with some degree of scepticism, but I now gladly admit that, after two days and after consideration of my impressions, I have been completely convinced of the great value of Caux. I consider it a notable act in a time when evil so openly rules the world, that people have the courage to stand for good, for God, and that each one begins with himself. I believe, as do all who have come here from Germany, and it is my dearest wish, that the ideas of Caux will bear rich fruit a thousand fold.'27

Adenauer privately urged that The Forgotten Factor and The Good Road should go to Germany, as did Major-General Bishop, the British Commissioner for North Rhine-Westphalia - including the industrial Ruhr - who was at Caux that month. At the same time invitations arrived for The Good Road from the cabinets of North Rhine-Westphalia and Württemberg-Baden, headed by Minister-Presidents Karl Arnold and Reinhold Maier, and from Minister-President Ehard of Bavaria. The British, American and French administrations offered such facilities as were available, with the result that what was described as 'a most welcome invasion' began, the largest non-military operation in Germany since the war.28

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