Groupers in Stockbridge

In the green Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts nestle a knot of towns--Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington-- whose natives are hardheaded Yankees, whose summer colonists are sedate, aristocratic New Englanders and Manhattanites. Two of the swankest, most comfortable hotels in the neighborhood are Heaton Hall and the Red Lion Inn at Stockbridge, both owned by Massachusetts' benign, broad-beamed Republican Representative Allen Towner Treadway. Manager of the Red Lion Inn is the Congressman's Yale-educated son, Heaton Ives Treadway, who in the winter runs hotels in Pinehurst, N. C. and Florida.

In Florida last winter Heaton Treadway met some members of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman's Oxford Groups. Well aware of how those earnest evangelists stalk the upper classes in their native habitat, Manager Treadway discoursed on the advantages of the Berkshires. Result was that last fortnight Representative Treadway was saying: "I guess the movement is beneficial. All that I've heard of the Groups is interesting and sound." And in Heaton Hall, the Red Lion Inn and other hostelries in and around Stockbridge were gathered a "team" of 800 Oxford Groupers from all over the world, in whose wake followed some 2,000 paying guests at Dr. Buchman's most ambitious U. S. effort to date, a "National Assembly."

Local Yankees were divided as to whether the "Buchmanites" practiced free love or were Socialists, but by the time the ten-day Assembly ended last week the rest of the U. S. could gain an honest, restrained view of its zealous activities from the newsreels, wire services and the Eastern press, which gave it publicity comparable to that which the Oxford Groups have received in Europe. Welcomed because an Oxford Group tenet is to spread the message of "God-control" as widely as possible, the publicity emphasized the adroit staging of the Assembly, the newsworthiness of the names identified with it, the singular nature of the testimony by which Oxford Group ideas were proffered to those who cared to listen.

On Memorial Day an airplane roared over New England trailing a banner inscribed: AMERICA AWAKE, THE OXFORD GROUP, STOCKBRIDGE. With the local post of the American Legion the Groupers paraded, held a meeting in front of the Stockbridge town hall. Leader of the parade, in a dirty, beaded leather jacket, was an Indian chief named Uhm-Pa-Tuth, billed as a Stockbridge (Mohican) Indian who had ended up on a reservation in Wisconsin, there turned to God and away from civilization and education which, he told the meeting, "don't make an Indian or anybody else any bet-ter." Marchers in the parade carried the flags of 48 States and 18 nations, including Germany's swastika, adverse comment on which was parried with the statement that thus does the Oxford Group bring nations together.

Members of the National Assembly could stay in hotels at $4 a day or a tent colony at $1.50. Those who chose the latter shivered at first, later found it a pleasant enough spot with its Army tents, mess tent and assembly tent which had done circus duty. According to one of its inmates. Rev. Charles Jarvis Harriman of Philadelphia's Episcopal Church of St. James the Less, the camp cost $600 as against preliminary estimates of $4,300. "God guidance is the answer," said Mr. Harriman. "We did not see how we could afford several thousand dollars to get our equipment from large supply houses, so we consulted God." The Groupers had 20 caddies carry tables for nothing from the town hall to the mess tent. "Guid ance," said Grouper Harriman. "That's what made me walk on the golf course just at that moment." The man in charge of the camp canteen, one James Mariano who claimed he had been a "drunk, pick pocket and strong-arm man," told an Assembly audience that "the canteen is directed by the Holy Spirit. We have no cashier. You simply go in and take what you want and pay for it and be God-guided all the time you are there." Said Camp Cook Francis Flannagan: "We have our quiet times in the morning so that through guidance we may make our menus."

Next to Frank Buchman, beaming and circulating briskly among the numerous places where Assembly meetings were held, the most ubiquitous Grouper was A. S. Loudon Hamilton, the tall, burly, pink-cheeked Scot who is second in com mand in the Group's world army. It was in his Oxford rooms that the movement received its first impetus in 1921. Subsequently a footballer at Colgate University, Grouper Hamilton married, begat two children, continued to live on a basis of faith without ever accepting a salaried position. Said he last week: "It takes God's guidance to make a Scot accept a situation like that."

Despite Grouper Hamilton's expert stage-managing, there occurred a slip on Frank Buchman's 58th birthday last week. Arising at 4:45 a.m. for his "quiet time" of listening to God's directions, Founder Buchman looked forward to a day during which he would broadcast to England, the expenses to be paid as a birthday gift from his British followers. But that afternoon as Dr. Buchman was motoring to fulfill this engagement, the gasoline feed line of his automobile clogged, precious minutes passed and finally Grouper H. Kenaston Twitchell read the Founder's words into the microphone. Outstanding birthday greeting received by Dr. Buchman was from Groupers in Hell, Norway, who cabled: "Hell's bells are ringing, our hearts are singing" in honor of "Frank's fifty-eighth."

Tennist Helen Wills Moody spent a week-end in Stockbridge, attended no Group meetings. But one day last week a private railway car rolled into a siding and out popped Clara Bryant Ford, self-effacing wife of Henry Ford. Far from exploited by the Groups, who made clear that she was not identified with their movement, Mrs. Ford quietly attended meetings, lunched with Dr. Buchman and the most important of his followers, beheld a documentary Group film called Bridge Builders. Two days later she departed, thus ending rumors that her husband was to arrive in the company of Harvey Firestone, whose family have been active in Group work.

Other distinguished visitors during the National Assembly: pious Copperman Cleveland Earl Dodge and his pious wife; Emily Newell Blair, writer and Democratic politician; Episcopal Bishop Walter Mitchell of Arizona; Mrs. Henry Noble MacCracken, wife of the president of Vassar College; Mrs. Henry Guggenheim, wife of the onetime Ambassador to Cuba; Mr. and Mrs. F. Shepard Cornell, Manhattan socialites; Lord Addington of England; Baroness de Watteville-Berckheim of Paris; Dr. J. E. W. Duys of The Netherlands Parliament; Carl Vrooman, onetime Assistant Secretary of Agriculture; Bernard Hallward, director of the Montreal Star; Herman Hintzen, Rotterdam banker; Eric Bentley, Canadian businessman; W. Farrar Vickers, British businessman; Sir Philip Dundas,of Edinburgh. Likewise present were the usual Oxford Group retired generals, admirals, sons and daughters of Anglican bishops, Scandinavian lawyers, reformed Communists, college students, etc., etc.

Typical of Oxford Group testimony in their mixture of humor, piety and crassness were the following statements during Assembly meetings:

"I now can see that God has a plan for business"--Charles Hogan, Manhattan butcher. "God can even show us how to play golf"--British Rear Admiral Horace Summerford.

"A conservative aristocrat, I am proud to stand on the same platform with a Dutch Socialist"--Lord Addington.

"Our budget is God-controlled. There is a real thrill and purpose in teas and dinner parties"--Mrs. Howard Reynolds. "I took time off from studying the part to listen to what God had to tell me. All fear of competition vanished"--Marion Clayton Anderson, bit player in Mutiny on the Bounty.

"When I went to a party, I could not stop. When I came home after a two-day absence I bought flowers and threw them through the door. If they didn't come flying out, I would go in. ... Later I went to one of these Oxford Group meetings . . . "--Brig. General Erie D. Luce, U. S. A., retired.

"A supernational network over live wires. A spiritual radiophone in every home. Every last man in America, in every last place in America, in every last situation in America, guided by God''-Dr. Buchman.

"Thanks to God for Frank Buchman"-Loudon Hamilton.

This week, after a large post-Assembly meeting in Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Buchman and two carloads of "life-changers" were to entrain for Cleveland and the first of the two national political conventions at which they planned to submit "God-guidance" planks.

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