For the next 50 years the theatre presented a host of plays and musicals. In Britain, hundreds donated money for the purchase of the Westminster Theatre in London, as a living memorial to the men and women of Moral Re-Armament who had died in war service. The historians Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson described the work as an "important contribution to one of the greatest achievements in the entire record of modern statecraft: the astonishingly rapid Franco-German reconciliation after 1945." Buchman was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government, and also the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. This became a centre of European reconciliation, attended by thousands in the following years, including German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. In 1946, 50 Swiss families active in the work of MRA bought and restored a large, derelict hotel at Caux, Switzerland. As a result, the Oxford Group workers were excluded from the Exemption from Military Service bill.Īt the end of the war, the MRA workers returned to the task of establishing a lasting peace. Bevin made clear that he would resign from the Government if he was defeated, and the Government put a three-line whip upon its supporters. Over 2,500 clergy and ministers signed a petition opposing this, and 174 Members of Parliament put down a motion stating the same. When Ernest Bevin became Minister of Labour in 1940, he decided to conscript them. In Britain, about 30 MRA workers were exempted from military service to continue this work. They have already achieved remarkable results in bringing teamwork into industry, on the principles not of 'who's right' but of 'what's right'." Where others have stood back and criticised, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Senator (later President) Harry Truman, Chair of the Senate's Truman Committee investigating war contracts, told a Washington press conference in 1943: "Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks. Others worked to heighten morale and overcome bottlenecks, particularly in war-related industries. When war broke out, many of those active in the campaign for Moral Re-Armament joined the Allied forces.
She dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories," and added, "What they are doing up and down the country in helping men and women solve their problems, and prepare them for whatever lies ahead, will prove to be of national importance in the days to come." The book sold 650,000 copies in Britain alone. In 1940, the novelist Daphne du Maurier published Come Wind, Come Weather, stories of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through MRA. Die Oxfordgruppenbewegung denounces Dr Buchman and Moral Re-Armament for "uncompromisingly taking up a frontal position against National Socialism… It preaches revolution against the National State, and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent." In 1945, during the Allied invasion of Europe a 126-page Gestapo report on Buchman, the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament was discovered. In Norway and elsewhere MRA leaders were imprisoned. Moral Re-Armament also became established in many countries of continental Europe, but it was suppressed in all the countries occupied by Nazi Germany.
And on 19 July 1939, 30,000 people attended the launch of Moral Re-Armament in the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles.
was the site of another launch, to which 240 British Members of Parliament sent a message of support. Three weeks later Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The Mayor of New York City declared 7–14 May to be "MRA week', and 14,000 people came to Madison Square Garden on 14 May for the public launch. There was a similar response in the United States. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies. The phrase caught the mood of the time, and many public figures in Britain spoke and wrote in support. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life." Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one," he said. At a meeting of 3,000 in East Ham Town Hall, London, on, he launched a campaign for Moral Re-Armament. Frank Buchman, who had been the driving force behind the Oxford Group, was convinced that military rearmament alone would not resolve the crisis.
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