World War II was initiated in Europe when Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939. Honoring their guarantee to Poland to secure its borders, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 and on September 17th the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. The MRA team who remained in America felt that their work, though not in time to avert World War II, could become the basis for reconstruction where an inspired ideology of democracy could later spread from America to the world.
Meanwhile there developed, a persecution from powerful quarters to try to silence this voice for change and moral redirection. Yet meeting halls drew people to overflowing presentations, indicating a hunger for a deeper meaning in life. 14 000 people had come to Madison Square Garden, New York; 4 000 to Constitution Hall, near the White House; and 30 000 people to the Hollywood Bowl, where 15 000 were turned away!
The advance was great. Everyone was expected and invited to contribute ideas and insights. Every morning they met as a team to compare notes, make plans and iron out any difficulties or personal differences which naturally appeared at times. These were no saints! They were normal human beings! They learnt how to work together without getting emotionally involved in each other and were expected to keep relationships free of sexual contact. There was a tremendous outpouring of hidden talent in action that affected life in the country in smaller or greater ways. Signe found this to be “A satisfying, thrilling experience that turned many heartaches into insight and caring for others and it cannot be overestimated what this meant in release of creative power. The writing, the music, the mounting of plays and the arranging of occasions that inspired solution to social conflicts were vast.”
The work they were engaged in had become such a challenge to negative forces in the US and a campaign to split their force was started to minimize its effect. The men had been asked by their governments to stay out of military service in order to pursue the morale-building work inspired by Buchman. Pressure was now put on various enlistment boards to force these men into military service by ridiculing them, making personal threats and even false claims in the public eye through the press. Arthur had an encounter with such a person thinking he was interested in MRA but who afterwards used the information he gleaned to denounce Arthur in the British press as a traitor. These men had to go about incognito. They could never answer phones as they were at risk for spies and agents whose task it was to infiltrate and destroy the work of MRA.
This situation shook the team deeply. They had no idea that such destructiveness existed in ordinary daily life. It was of course also a measure of the effectiveness of the work they were engaged in on all levels of society: labour, management, government, military and culture. They were shocked to experience the extent of these measures in all areas of life and had to learn how to work and manage situations without leaving themselves or their work open to those who were out to cause damage – not only to their team but also to those who were requesting their help. Many of these people were in high positions and had seen MRA as a way to reverse the decline of civilization.
SCHUMAKERS
The time in New York with SCHUMACHERS
AA
The team travelled across America in a cavalcade of cars starting in New York. They made various stops along the way. One memorable stop was in SanFrancisco where the team had booked
THE WORLDS FAIR /GOLDEN GATE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION
San Francisco’s World Fair was the scene of MRA Day on August 1st 1939. The Golden Gate International Exposition was a World’s Fair held at Treasure Island in San Francisco. This exposition operated from February 18, 1939, through October 29, 1939, and from May 25, 1940, through September 29, 1940 and drew 17 million visitors to Treasure Island. The team were invited to be part of an international parade which passed all the way down the middle of the high street with all their national flags flying. It was dramatic. Arthur had made huge billboards that said something like Fear free, Hate free, Greed free world (For details read in Arthurs book A Preview For a New World.) which was what the group proposed that America should fight for. Arthur had created a big screen illustrated with portraits of people who had already started to implement the idea that change is possible and necessary in order to bring real peace in the world.
Signe remembers some of the funny sides of life on the road! “I was sharing a room in lodgings with a young girl from South Carolina and she was a terrible snorer! She snored absolutely relentlessly all night long! I have always been a very light sleeper and I was desperate! She knew that she snored and we used to discuss our problem as she slept easily and from the moment she put her head on the pillow she was off! In the end she came up with the idea that she would tie a stocking from under her jaw and over the top of her head to keep her mouth shut (chuckle)! To have to deal with this snoring was a real test of my decision to do the heroic thing! She was an artist too and we worked together for a long, long, time after that, so this problem wasn’t a one-time event. It stayed with us! But we remained close friends throughout and it worked out. The great thing was that she could have been hurt and miffed at my criticism about her snoring but she cooperated and we solved it together!”
Buchman felt that the time had come to give his team training so that they could be equipped to operate on their own. He invited some of the team to join him in Tahoe where he had a friend who ran a hotel . This friend provided them with some beds and they were eventually around a hundred people staying there untill winter began to make itself known.
Starting with a show at a party for a friend of Buchman’s in Tahoe they began to use the stage as an instrument to get across some ideas. These ideas had been tried and tested in their private and working lives and found to work. A musical developed that demonstrated these personal experiences and with the help of gifted professional actors, actresses, writers and presenters within the team, the performance grew. Before they knew it, they were invited to bring the show to Reno, Nevada, Americas biggest casino city! The mayor of Reno had seen one of the private performances that had been created and was thrilled with it. He saw the possibilities of reaching out which was a new idea to the task force who saw their work more in terms of person-to-person talks and definitely not from a stage! Signe had serious doubts that this was really the way to do it as standing on a stage was way out of her comfort zone. But that was what developed and from then on they were invited from one stage to another across America. The review was eventually called We Can Defend America and they soon had a full programme taking them from coast to coast. The production grew to became more and more professional as time went on.
They were invited to perform to industries like Boeing, for Labor Unions and for soldiers in training at military camps. They were invited to perform in major cities where people had heard of their work and the effect it had had on people. It brought a real sense of how everyone can do something positive that could affect the chain of events in the world.
At the beginning of all this strenuous coast-to-coast travelling, one of Signe’s friends called her early one morning to tell her that Norway had been invaded by a German military force. It was the 9th of April 1940. Signe couldn’t understand what they could want by invading Norway? These were very big happenings in the life of an ordinary young girl and it took time before Signe could get any direct news from home. She didn’t know how they were or if they were safe. She discovered that she could send a telegram through the Red Cross, but it could only contain 25 words. No names or mention of the weather were allowed and several other things were forbidden to be mentioned. The family could also send a telegram back to Signe through the Red Cross but all the messages were highly censored with black lines drawn through the text so that they were often hard to understand. And this was how Signe discovered that her closest sister Nussa had had a severe nervous breakdown. Nussa and Signe were very close growing up. Signe’s family were closely in her thoughts.
Signe’s Father’s sister was married to Frits Holm one of the leading Air Force officers at the time. He had done many famous things one of which was to fly over the North Pole with Amundsen, polar researcher. She had heard that they had both escaped from Norway at the same time as the Norwegian King, several of the government and others and had set up an intelligence operations service with the British authorities.
One day when the team was in New York and Signe was in bed with a cold, her hostess loaned her a radio. Signe was fiddling with the radio and suddenly heard a Norwegian voice come over on the radio. He was speaking from the American outpost of the Norwegian underground in Washington.
Soon after she started listening, he started telling how a group of 30 young men had been caught by the German military. They had been preparing a fishing boat to cross the North Sea to get to England and join the free Norwegian forces in order to liberate Norway together with the British army and navy. Among these 30 young men was Signe’s cousin Ole. It turned out that another of their group was an informer and when they reached a certain point he warned the German military of their whereabouts and they were taken captive. They were first interrogated to find out about the underground work in Norway but when they didn’t talk they were tortured and amongst other things they pulled out their fingernails. Finally they were all shot and put in a mass grave, including Signe’s cousin Ole.
Signe shared, “It was absolutely incredible that I should have been in bed at that point; that I had a radio to listen to; and that I had turned it on at that very moment so that I could hear the incredibly few words that were personally important to me so far from home. Very strange. I was devastated. But somehow this also confirmed for me that there is a higher plan. There is a purpose that I cannot understand or influence, but it is there.
”It is important to sensitize yourself to those hunches, those things that steer your inner path to this higher force. These hunches are always there but it is so easy to get too busy, and too thoughtless or absorbed in what you are doing so that you don’t take the time to be quiet and listen inwardly. Not that these kinds of experiences happen all the time, but in order to get in the habit of turning inwardly and being quiet. Arthur would say that what we need in the world is an explosion of silence. And silence is one thing that we don’t have much of.
“That experience brought a feeling of certainty to me that there is a pattern and a plan and all I need to do is trust in it. Later I saw many times how it all fitted in to what seemed to me be an overall pattern that you could only sense when you looked back on it.”
After these painful snippets of news from home Signe didn’t spare herself,
“I felt that nothing was too much if we were going to make these ideas for peace work. In the end I got so overworked that I couldn’t carry on. A kind friend sent me off to a health spa run by Seventh Day Adventists. I had all sorts of treatments there. Water treatment, massage treatment and many others that I can’t remember. I was given healthy food all of which helped me to cleanse my body – but also my soul.
“I remember one day when I felt really desperate, I got some thoughts as if they had been written clearly or spoken. The words were: All you need to do is to give yourself fully to one person at a time. This felt important for me – to know that I can’t alter things on my own but if we each individually do what is possible it will somehow be used and put together by a higher force.
“It seemed like a mosaic. You live your little piece here, and the next little piece there. You don’t see the whole pattern. You don’t know what it is going to become. But you see the bit that you have to do and so you go on building your part of the mosaic. And here and there you meet others who are also building part of the mosaic and you continue building together. And maybe in our lifetime, or maybe later, the mosaic will be completed.”
Speaking from the stage to big public audiences was strange to Signe. Later in life she marvelled at all she had absorbed in those days, months and years about the artistry of how to speak your word. How to think and write to get a message across to people. Not just big important words of truth, but in everything and in every way.
Signe experienced fundamental changes in her development, changing from a self-absorbed unhappy creature, to a person who dared to step out in faith. To give of herself and that this would lead to something important in the big mosaic.
“This is what creates an atmosphere where people can receive thoughts of a higher nature. So although I spent a lot of time during these travelling days, doing practical things like layouts for handbooks, posters, books, leaflets and helping Arthur and his photo team, they were all artistic expressions of things I felt very deeply. It may sound trivial but they were fundamental to me.”
During the time in America Signe discovered a lot of new areas in her life. For example in relationships with other people. She experienced a greater personal freedom from herself and more about what responsibility means.
“I felt how my life had changed, not because the external circumstances were different, but because I had a new constitution for my life. A positive attitude to life, the future and to other people. This foundation has been built on throughout my life that was new but never ending.
“This was a real, deep, experience of being in touch with a purpose higher than myself, together with others. It was a tremendous experience. We did many things wrong. Some experiments didn’t work. We did many things that we might have done better later – but I think that to all or most of us it was deeply inspiring.”
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The team in San Francisco had booked the big opera house in 1945 so that the show “You can defend America” could be presented on stage. Then they discovered that the League of Nations (before it became the United Nations) had decided that San Francisco would be their meeting place for the first gathering of the nations in order to create the constitution of the United Nations. This happened during the days that the MRA team was in San Francisco.
Arthur had applied to Norwegian and British embassies in Washington to be their press photographers at the whole League of Nations sessions. As it turned out Arthur was the only representative for the British Press and Signe the only representative for the Norwegian Press.
There were altogether 80 photographers there and Signe was one of 3 women. One woman dressed and acted like a man – and was easily absorbed within the crowd of male photographers – which was of itself quite unusual in those days. The other was a young woman who arrived every day on a motorbike much like a Valkyria, wearing a white sweater, black trousers and yellow flying hair. And then there was Signe – in her best Sunday dress. Signe found this very amusing!
There were several attempts made to patronize Signe – maybe because she was the only woman photographer who looked like a girl! On the first day, she went into the big foyer where all the journalists and photographers gathered and she became very aware of a group of photographers across the hall who were obviously looking and talking about her. She watched them out of the corner of her eye as her heart beat like drumsticks. Eventually one of them came over to Signe and said, “We haven’t seen you before,” implying that all the photographers knew each other. “No,” she said, ”you haven’t seen me before.” He asked who she represented and when she replied, “The Royal Norwegian Information Service.” He responded “Oh, it’s very royal isn’t it!” And Signe said, “Yes, it is!” She could see him register that she was no push-over and from then on, she was fully respected as a photographer.
Most of the photographers were big men in comparison and Signe had to struggle to claim her shot when it came to popular speakers. For instance, when the Russian delegation spoke and there was a barrier of photographers in front of her she ended up going up to the balcony while Arthur was able to be down on the floor and crept onto the stage if he wanted to. But then Signe didn’t represent a big country like Britain either. Gradually the other photographers made space for Signe to get her shots and showed her the ropes, like where to go if her camera gave her trouble, as you had to tinker with your camera yourself in those days! Arthur and the other photographers all had enormous complicated press cameras. Signe had a slightly smaller version because she couldn’t lift the heavy version that Arthur had.
Arthur, had a great gift of making friends with all kinds of people, he didn’t care if it was the King of Saudi Arabia or a taxi-driver. He talked to them about what the MRA team was doing and invited them to the performance to be held in San Francisco where they could meet Frank Buchman and other interesting people. They came of course, were very impressed and many became life-long friends. The people around Frank who were experienced and knew the world, were able to meet them on their own terms and that impressed them too. For instance Prime Minister Jan Smuts from South Africa who was there.
Arthur took a portrait of the son of the Saudi Arabian King during the League of Nations meeting. He was invited to bring the portrait to his room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and Signe was asked by Arthur to come as his assistant. Arthur used a tripod for his camera and Signe tried to make conversation with the Prince while Arthur was setting up. She pointed to something that was pinned onto the wall behind the Prince and asked naively, “That is very interesting, does it have a special meaning?” He replied haughtily, “It’s our national flag!” Signe felt like sinking into the floor! She felt like the naive girl from a small country in northern Europe that she was. She had hardly met a person of colour before and she didn’t follow world events. She was still a child at heart. Arthur quickly smoothed it over and took a beautiful picture.
In those days news was spread through newspapers and by radio. People sent telegrams or telexes if they wanted to reach someone urgently but there was no instant messaging or social media. Since the task force’s focus was to spread good news that could inspire change, Arthur and Signe started to train a team of young people in the art of recording all that they were doing. Together with those who were gifted with words they got the inspiring news onto billboards and into the media. Others wrote music and created musical reviews and stage plays which they produced and travelled with across the US in their cavalcade of cars. They stayed with friends and enlisted new teammates everywhere they went.
“The fun, the laughter and the flow of the Holy Spirit” were what they were attracted to when they met
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