In June 1917 Buchman sailed for China on the Empress of Russia with three Hartford friends and two Yale men. He had his father's blessing for the trip. 'Father was very eager to have me go,' he wrote later to Dan, 'and when I for a moment spoke of not being able to go, he said very decidedly, "Go, it is your duty, I do not want you to stay for me."'23

In these early months, Buchman himself learnt a basic lesson. During their ten-day voyage across the Pacific members of the party became critical of each other and of Buchman in particular. The reason is not entirely clear, but the undercurrents persisted when, the others having proceeded to their mission stations, only three of the party - Howard Walter, Sherwood Day* and Buchman - were left to work and travel together. They realised that they could hardly tackle division in China until the divisions within their own ranks had been healed. The three of them therefore sat at a round table in a sparsely furnished hotel room in Tientsin - 'a setting rather like a poker game, the light a little too high for comfort', according to Walter - and said honestly what they felt about each other.

(* Sherwood Day, a graduate of Yale and at one time YMCA Secretary there, worked and travelled with Buchman for twenty-two years, between 1916 and 1938.)

Out of these talks, Sherwood Day wrote later, evolved the principle that no member of a team should say anything about someone to anyone else which he had not already told the person concerned.24

Howard Walter amplified the principle in a letter to Sherwood Eddy: 'I have come to a new realisation this summer of the importance of the utmost frankness within the circle of any group of people working together, combined with entire absence of criticism of others outside the group, or indeed anywhere in the absence of the person immediately concerned. In China I have seen how criticism of Frank, or of you, started perhaps in some careless joke and growing as it spread, has played havoc with our work and met us at every turn taking much time and trouble and prayer to overcome. Even within our little group of three we found the same danger … We finally got together for several long talks in which every critical thought ever cherished was brought to light, and we went forth with a new unity and mutual confidence, determined henceforth to keep on that firm basis with each other and with our fellow workers, just in so far as they would unite with us in this mutual understanding.'25Buchman, after the Tientsin meeting, always regarded complete openness as a prerequisite for effective teamwork.

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