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Salient: At Victoria University College, Wellington, N. Z. Vol. 24, No. 10. 1961.

Moral Rearmament

Moral Rearmament

Sir,—The trouble with most fundamentalist sects is that they see the world in two colours only. It is to this that I attribute Frank Buchmann's (wealthy leader of M.R.A.) vision of Hitler as an angel sent to rescue the world from the devil Stalin. I adopt this view, rather than the more uncharitable one that Buchmann found Hitler's political, economic and racial policies most akin to his own, because I am a charitable person.

By the way, Mr Caughey, how many Jewish members are there in M.R.A.?

I wonder what was the motive that inspired General Jouhard (French M.R.A. spokesman) to participate in the abortive Algerian revolt? To overthrow General De Gaulle, communist puppet, or to show his great love of humanity by shooting his coloured Algerian Moslem brothers?

Communism must be fought sir, but cannot be by the foolish philosophy of M.R.A. or by the money-oriented, publicity-minded members of M.R.A.

Yours, etc.,

V. G. Maxwell.

Sir,—

(1)The claim that M.R.A. is an ideology which combats "Godless Communism on a world front and Godless materialism on the home front" is true only insofar as the aim of M.R.A. as an organisation is to seek out and destroy Communism within and without the State.
(2)That their tenet of "absolute love" is sheer nonsense—it needs the addition of "towards those who agree with us and support us."
(3)That the Christian basis they claim for it and the use they seek to make of Christianity is a distortion of true Christianity (M.R.A. simply uses Christianity as a cleansing force: to them M.R.A. is greater than Christianity).
(4)That those who make the biggest financial contribution to the movement (not "ordinary men and women" but big businessmen and other vested interests) are concerned mainly with using M.R.A. to advance their own interests. This is not a wild claim, but cold, sober truth.
(5)That M.R.A. is in fact an international McCarthyist movement, as Philip Hey wood put it, in an article in " Isis."

As a Christian, I would like to believe in some of the avowed aims of M.R.A. but I cannot believe in the movement as a whole, in the methods they use and in their fundamental philosophy of life (which is not based on the lour "absolutes").

Realist.