Moral Re-Armament: The Battle For Peace - edited by H.W. “Bunny” Austin

Moral Re-Armament: The Battle For Peace

edited by H.W. “Bunny” Austin

This book was edited by Bunny Austin and is a collection of letters about the Oxford Group/Moral Re-Armament. This book is a first printing and was published in December 1938 at the time, the fellowship was still known as The Oxford Group. This book may be the very first published book to take on the name “Moral Rearmament”.

About Bunny Austin:

Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin born August 26, 1906 and passed away August 26, 2000 was an English professional tennis player and prominent member of the Oxford Group(Moral Re-Armament) that became close with the founder Frank Buchman.

He married actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931, after meeting her in 1929 on a transatlantic liner while travelling for the US Open, and together they were one of the celebrity couples of the age. Austin played tennis with Charlie Chaplin, was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, Ronald Colman, and Harold Lloyd, and met both Queen Mary and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1933, concerned by increasing threats of a renewal of European, and indeed wider, war, Austin became involved in the Oxford Group, later Moral Re-Armament, speaking on public platforms and writing press articles. He and Fred Perry were the only players to raise their voice, in a letter to The Times, against the Nazi ban on Jews joining the German team for the Davis Cup. According to Austin's friend Peter Ustinov, Austin was "disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club because he was a conscientious objector". In fact, soon after British declaration of the Second World War, before the question whether he might register as an objector arose, he accepted an invitation from Frank Buchman, Oxford Group founder, for a speaking tour of the US, and went, with the apparently overt approval of the British government. In 1943, with the extension of US conscription to Allied resident citizens, he was drafted into the US Army Air Force, but a diagnosis of Gilbert's Syndrome (periodic malfunction of the liver) precluded him from combat service, and he was discharged in 1945. The syndrome explained his occasional and sudden fatigue on the court.

Austin devoted the rest of his life to Moral Re-armament and wrote several books about it, as well as his autobiography, with Phyllis Konstam, A Mixed Double (1969). They worked closely with Buchman, traveling widely with him in America and Europe as well as Australasia, the Pacific countries and India. They pioneered MRA’s Christian theatre productions, particularly on their return to London in 1961, at the Westminster Theatre. After his wife died in 1976, Austin wrote his last book in memory of her, a series of touchingly honest “letters” entitled To Phyll With Love (1979).

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This book is in good condition with some wear to the cover. There is no writing or markings inside the book.

Please view all of the photos for the conditions.