President Sparks always backed Buchman in his work. But even he was given on occasion the same kind of treatment as his students. The draft of a letter to Sparks which Buchman wrote while he was on a tour of the Far East suggests that he was no respecter of persons. It begins: 'Dear President Sparks, I am talking to you as I talk to the men. I have repeatedly tried to bring you to a realisation of your spiritual needs but I have evidently not made myself clear.

'My chief concern is for your own soul. You show every symptom of not being a happy man. Your smile seems forced. You do not seem to find the real joy in your religious life. Your interest is commendable and far exceeds that of others I know, but it does not ring true...'23

Not surprisingly, perhaps, if the tone of this letter was typical, Buchman had plenty of critics at Penn State. Some members of the faculty accused him of self-advertisement: his annual reports, which were quoted in evidence, seldom erred on the side of understatement. In 1914, for example, he wrote, 'Prominent people are keen to know about God's wonder-working in our midst.… Penn State as a result of this year has become a world factor, and is making her influence felt in many centres.' The North American Student magazine, he went on, with evident satisfaction, had given extensive notice of Penn State's campaigns in two issues, while a campaign led by Mott at Columbia had only merited a few lines.24Buchman may well have believed that what had happened at Penn State was entirely the work of God - indeed he often said, 'I hadn't any part in all this except that I let God use me' - but he certainly sounded at times as if he was blowing his own trumpet, if only on behalf of the Almighty.

Some of the faculty also charged him with name-dropping. He was, declared one, 'always talking about important men and women he knew', an instance being a telegram explaining a postponed return 'which ended in a long list of the famous he was meeting'.25 This could well have been after an occasion where the Andrew Carnegies invited him to meet various of their friends, including the heads of Yale, Cornell and other major educational institutions, when his work at Penn State was a matter of frequent remark.

Yet a contrasting characteristic was evident. A visitor to one of the 'Y Week' campaigns, Professor Norman Richardson, remarked to the college chaplain, Robert Reed, 'I have been interested in watching this man Buchman all day. He is always in the background, pushing others into places of leadership and responsibility.'26

He was also, it seems, ready to accept criticism which he felt justly applied to him. He wrote to a friend at Union Theological Seminary in New York, 'Thanks so much for your most helpful criticism. It is just this that I need most of all... I am just like a beginner... I have just spoken at Wesleyan, and …. felt that it had not "come across".'27

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