ASIAN RECONNAISSANCE

In April 1915 Buchman left Pennsylvania State College, permanently as it turned out.* America still being neutral, Mott had asked if he would join a small 'flying squadron' of experienced workers for service among the prisoners-of-war in Europe;1 then, a few days later, the evangelist, Sherwood Eddy, with Mott's agreement, pressed him to go instead to India to help to prepare a large-scale religious campaign. Buchman, as he well knew, had built up a reputation for lasting personal work at Penn State - Mott thought it 'the most thorough he had ever seen'2 - and was therefore the man to help lay the groundwork for the new campaign. Buchman had longed since 1902 to visit India and, in spite of his mother's protests at his leaving America, fanned by her fears of German torpedoes, he went. He sailed on 28 June for Marseilles in the Italian ship Patria, and thence to Colombo on 16 July.

(* Sparks renewed his invitation to Buchman to return to Penn State in a letter of 9 October 1916.)

He found an India where the British Raj reigned supreme, if not secure. Gandhi, whom Buchman met briefly at the home of Bishop Whitehead in Madras, had only just come back from South Africa and was still a little-known figure on the fringe of political life. At that stage he seems to have made no particular impact on Buchman, nor Buchman on Gandhi. Buchman also stayed at the Viceregal Lodge while Lord Hardinge was Viceroy, and toured three of the princely states, in company with Sam Higginbotham, founder of the agricultural mission in Allahabad. Others from this period who became friends were Rabindranath Tagore and Amy Carmichael, creator of the Dohnavur Fellowship near Tinnevelly, which he described as 'the place nearer heaven than any spot on earth'.

During the next six months Buchman travelled throughout India, from Travancore in the south to Rawalpindi in the north, from Bombay to Calcutta, criss-crossing the continent many times, paying three visits to Madras. In Travancore, where his campaign began, Eddy claimed a total in audiences of 400,000, and there were 60,000 at a single meeting which Buchman addressed. Buchman's main function, however, was to help to train the Christian workers whose job it was to follow up these vast meetings; in Travancore, he had a workers' group of 1,300, 'with the Metropolitan and clergy of the Mar Thoma Church in attendance'.*

(* The South Indian church traditionally founded by St Thomas.)

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