Buchman was addressing his challenge not only to the world at large, but also to himself and his closest friends. 'I feel keenly the crucial point we have reached in our lives personally and as a force,' he wrote to two of them. 'We face a desperate moment in the world and we cannot go on living as we have lived.'8 More particularly, the unease he had felt for some years about some of his longest-standing colleagues came to a head. He was in an agony of spirit at what he regarded as his failure to transmit to them the depth of his own experience. Would they be able to tackle the future without him, a situation which could not now be long delayed?

His unease, at this point, focussed on his American colleagues, although it might equally well have been upon the British, Swiss or other national groups, as it had at different times. 'How terribly they have missed God's truth, those Americans who are the apple of my eye,' he dictated early on 18 July. 'I felt this so strongly this morning that I hoped to come and tell you this, but I am weary.' He got Howard to read these words to a meeting of all his American colleagues in Caux that afternoon. 'But God marches on', he added, 'and all those who know the truth shall be made free. It is my consummate wish for you all.'

The meeting was one of a series which took place every afternoon for a month. Garrett Stearly writes that they were 'an endeavour by every possible means to engender in his closest colleagues a more profound and liberating experience of the Holy Spirit. Buchman showed himself thoroughly dissatisfied with our quality of leadership, finding us movement-minded, imitative of himself rather than God-led, encased in an ideological form instead of having freedom to follow the Spirit's new ways ...Daily he tried to bring alive the inward experience of Christ which he had seen in the past in us.'

Buchman's aim was impeccable, but it is doubtful whether repeated meetings were the most effective method of remedying the situation, particularly as Buchman was often too weak to be there himself and had to relay his thinking and his criticisms at second hand. Some of these were inaccurate and others became distorted in transmission. Many of his old friends were left bewildered. In private, when individuals got through to him, Buchman was as helpful as ever. The Stearlys were two of those who went and talked it out with him. They told him of something which had been stopping their spiritual effectiveness. 'Immediately a living affection was reborn.' Others tried but found him too weak to receive them.

The assembly, meanwhile, was hurtling on at its usual pace. By mid-July the six Buddhist abbots who had been sent by the Presiding Abbots' Association of Burma to celebrate the birthday of the man who, they said, 'comes only once in a thousand years', had flown back home. A special plane arrived from South America, and 129 people returned there to reinforce that campaign. Delegations came from Laos and Kenya, and special planes and trains arrived from around Europe. A cable had been received from Prime Minister Kishi on behalf of a number of Japanese leaders in various fields, announcing their intention to 'create this year an MRA Asian Centre in Odawara where the statesmen of East and West can meet and develop a strategy to save our continents'.9 The Prime Minister also announced that he would visit Caux in August, as did Prime Minister U Nu of Burma.

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