Ole Bjørn Kraft, the former Danish Foreign Minister, had already proposed that he and nine other members or past members of European governments might go in a private capacity to talk with governments about Moral Re-Armament. When this proposal reached Buchman in Santa Barbara, California, he gathered a dozen of his friends. He felt the plan was good, but inadequate: he wanted to tackle the course of events more directly.

Peter Howard had been working on an idea for a full-scale musical play on the theme of a divided world. The group were quiet for a while. Then with great force Buchman said, 'We have got to reach a billion people in Asia. Let these men go there and let them take this play with them. Make it a "world mission".2 The play was not yet finished. The cast would be large. The venture would cost at least a quarter of a million dollars, of which none was in sight. Transport would be needed for two hundred people and much baggage. But the size of the project set people in motion. The European politicians accepted this expansion of their plans and joined in.

Howard's play, The Vanishing Island, portrayed two countries. One, the land of Eiluph'mei (I Love Me) had a faith but did not live it; she turned liberty into licence. The other, Weiheitu (We Hate You) had a faith which she lived fully and passionately - the drive and discipline of hate to conquer the world. The tone was one of sharp satire but also compassion, for it recognised the human roots of the conditions on each side. The aim was to show the futility of both 'materialist revolution' and 'materialist reaction' - taking up Jamali's alternatives at Bandung - and to put flesh and bones on the answering concept he expressed there. 'This play', wrote the author, 'is not, of course, the story of any one country. It is the story of every country and every human heart in the world today.'

Some of Buchman's Hollywood friends caught the idea of what he was aiming to do. Lewis Allen, the film director, cancelled engagements to produce the show. Herbert Weiskof trained the chorus, Nico Charisse gave them their choreography, Thomas Peluso sat up three nights running arranging the musical score, and Reginald Owen and Ivan Menzies offered to play leading parts without salary. Thomas Peluso said to the cast, 'This is the greatest thing I ever have done ... the most unique thing of my forty-two years as a conductor.'

The cast and public figures from various countries gathered at Mackinac Island in May 1955. During June, July and August 244 people of twenty-eight nationalities were to visit eighteen countries on four continents. In eleven countries they were to be government guests. Asia and Africa were to be the first continents visited. But preliminary showings were given in the National Theater in Washington, each performance concluded by brief speeches from the national spokesmen. One of the most effective of these was Mohammed Masmoudi. Now a member of the Tunisian Cabinet, he stood with the French Secretary of State for Air in the Mendès-France Government, Diomède Catroux, and said, 'Without Moral Re-Armament, we would be involved today in Tunisia in a war to the death against France ... Tunisia would now be a second Indo-China.'3

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