Buchman was unusually active in his three weeks at Caux that Christmas. He took the morning meetings on 20 and 21 December, as well as giving tea-parties for the main guests. 'Here we had a powerful Christmas Day,' he wrote to a friend in America. 'The Greeks and the Turks from Cyprus brought messages from Archbishop Makarios and Dr Kuçuk.* An African, who when he was here earlier was so possessed with hatred of the white man that he could not finish a speech from the platform, stood up a free man ready to take a very responsible position in his country.'5 He only spent eight of the twenty-one days entirely in bed, and appeared in the entrance hall to greet his main guests and talked with many over meals.

(* President and Vice-President respectively. In 1960, in recognition of MRA's help, they had jointly sent the first flag of independent Cyprus to Buchman at Caux.)

After Caux, Buchman and a party of over thirty returned to Rome. He stayed till 6 March, and it was again a busy time, combining many individual meetings with private showings of the film of The Crowning Experience. Among his visitors were the widow of Signor Marconi, and the widow and daughter of former Prime Minister de Gasperi. On 7 February Don Luigi Sturzo's physician came to tea and said how much his patient had spoken of Buchman's work during his last weeks, referring to it as 'fire from heaven'.* Buchman prepared a dossier at Cardinal Tisserant's request, and entertained a number of bishops including Archbishop Gregorius who brought the latest news from Kerala. One afternoon he also gave tea to Father Damboriena, the man who in 1957 had written the articles in the Civiltà Cattolica and Monitor Ecclesiasticus which had spread the more fantastic misconceptions about his work.

(* Sturzo, in old age, drew encouragement from Moral Re-Armament. When he heard from Irene and Victor Laure how they had found faith in God, he remarked, 'I thank God that I have found allies in the fight for the moral re-armament of the world.' His last book was entitled Riarmo morale.)

On his return to Caux Buchman received news of successful premieres of The Crowning Experience in Rome and Milan. A Milan critic had written, 'It transcends the theatre. A film of the greatest moral and spiritual force ever to come out of the industry.'6 This exactly confirmed Buchman's own view of the film, which did not raise his opinion of the press or his colleagues in America and Britain where commercial audiences were less enthusiastic.

Throughout all this year Buchman was possessed with a tremendous sense of urgency. It was partly caused by the advances which he believed world Communism to be making - though he told his colleagues that they would live to see Communism a spent force. On occasion - particularly in America where to be 'against Communism' seemed to him many people's cheap way of avoiding the need to face their own sins - he would forbid his team even to mention the word. He always maintained that the message of Moral Re-Armament would have been necessary if Communism had never existed, and would still be needed if it vanished from the earth. His chief concern now, therefore, was with what he saw as the growing decadence in nations, and particularly among their leaders.

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