OXFORD GROUP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 October 1941, Page 5

OXFORD GROUP

MR A. P. HERBERT’S ATTACK EXTENDED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. SUGGESTED PROPOSAL TO DR. BUCHMAN. I (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 7. In the course of the debate in the House of Commons on the refusal of the Minister of Labour (Mr Bevin) to grant exemption from military service to Oxford Group lay preachers, Mr A. P. Herbert (Independent) congratulated Mr Bevin, but said he had hoped the Minister would have gone further, because the Government, like the previous Government, had been weak in this affair. "I know what lam up against in this vast, wealthy, ruthless organisation, which is able at this moment to flood the cofmtry with fourpage, printed leaflets of expensive paper with no name of the printer in accordance with the law,” Mi' Herbert added. “I am tired of hearing about persecution. “The tone, language and technique of the Oxford Group Company, Limited, is strikingly and sadly similar to the Nazis. Dr. Buchman is not a friend of Britain. He loves Hitler as well as he loves us. His teaching tends to flabbiness on the one hand and Fascism on the other. The bulk of these boys are good, but there is a sparkle of the dangerous infection of flabbiness and Fascism in the people we are discussing, namely, the evangelists.

“I have a letter saying that the movement in Denmark is the principal force in spreading defeatism. Dr. Buchman is credited with saying ‘Thank God there is a man like Hitler.’ Never since the outbreak of the war, in spite of challenges, has that remark been denied or corrected. “I invite Mr Mathers to ask Dr. Buchman to cable, ‘Hitler must be defeated and Hitlerism destroyed.’ If Dr. Buchman does not reply in reasonable time I will go to Mr Churchill and ask for severe measures in relation to this company. I will ask that the Oxford Groupers be told to choose between Buchman and Britain, and if they don’t that the Government prohibit the society as potentially dangerous to the State.” Earlier in the debate. Mr G. Mathers (Lab.) had criticised strongly the refusal to exempt Oxford Group lay preachers, declaring that the question was one of principle, not one of pleading for conscientious objectors.