Man of vision: there would probably be no MRA (Moral Re-Armament) centre at Caux were it not for the inspiration in 1942 of ... Philippe Mottu.

Philippe Mottu is in the tradition of Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross. As Genevese and Christians, both men, moved by human suffering, acted decisively in a way that has benefited the world and in so doing added lustre to Switzerland.

Appalled at the death of close friends in World War II, both in the armies of the Allies and in the ranks of the German resistance, Mottu had the idea of creating a centre of reconciliation. As early as 1942 he had the conviction that if Switzerland were spared the war it should provide a place where Europeans, torn apart by hatred, suffering and resentment, could come together. In 1946 he and other Swiss bought the run-down Caux Palace Hotel as the place for that work. Fifty years later Caux has become a symbol of hope around the world.

The Mottu family has been at least four centuries in Geneva. Next year they will celebrate the earliest record, a wedding in 1597. History has always been a passion for Philippe Mottu; his first major book was Le destin de l'occident (The destiny of the West) and his latest, out this autumn, is Regards sur le siecle (A look back over the century), with a foreword by former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

He could also be said to have had a part in creating history--in shoring up Swiss resolve to stand up to German expansionism at the time of World War II, in assisting the internal German resistance to Hitler, and later in creating the centre at Caux.

In 1933 Philippe Mottu was working in a private bank in Geneva when what he calls `a surprising event' swung his life into a different orbit. He attended a church service for businessmen. He went in an agnostic and came out an hour later `having had the personal experience of an encounter with the one who has written on my heart these words: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." ' That evening his life found an anchor in a faith which has never left him through many trials, through successes and failures.

As a result of this experience Mottu decided to study theology and went to Lausanne. There yet another dimension came into his life through his Latin professor, Jules Rochat, who told him about the ideas of the Oxford Group (later MRA). `Very simply and naturally he talked to me about moral standards by which to test our thoughts and actions, about listening to the inner voice and honesty as the conditions for normal living with the people around us.'

Switzerland in those years was in a deep economic crisis. The social climate was becoming violent. The bankruptcy of a Genevese bank had shaken the community and there had been a riot in which the army intervened so clumsily that many died or were wounded. Deeply shaken, Mottu began to seek for a way to respond to the needs of his country and the world.

In 1935 Frank Buchman, the initiator of the Oxford Group, came to Geneva with a group of celebrities to meet the delegates who were taking part in the General Assembly of the League of Nations. Mottu met him there--and it was the start of a bond of friendship which was to last 25 years.

Over the next years Mottu took a growing part in the work of the Oxford Group in Switzerland and abroad. Their efforts had a part in improving the social climate of the country and inspired thousands to pay their taxes with greater integrity. In 1937 after a big meeting in Lausanne Mottu decided to devote all his time to this action. The dean of his theology faculty gave him his blessing: `At last, a Genevese who has the courage fully to carry out his convictions.'

Meanwhile, the world scene had been worsening. In 1938 Buchman launched the idea of a moral and spiritual rearmament for all nations and decided to hold his first world assembly for Moral Re-Armament at Interlaken in Switzerland. Mottu found himself responsible for organizing it.

When World War II began in 1939 there was a general mobilization and Mottu was called into the army. Switzerland found itself the target of intense German propaganda. Mottu and his Oxford Group collegues helped to organize a resistance movement under the name of the Gothard League. They wanted to make sure the government did not give in, and to inspire new social policies. They placed full-page announcements in all the main papers appealing to people not to be discouraged, to remain united and to be ready to resist. `We wanted in that way to declare that our country wished to remain faithful to her historic democratic traditions,' he says. While in the army he was able to study political science and later joined the Swiss Foreign Office.

In 1940, on the advice of a priest, Mottu contacted a German diplomat, Herbert Blankenhorn. The first visit was formal but, as Mottu was leaving, the German asked if he would walk with him the following week in a forest near Bern. `There, at the very moment France was falling,' says Mottu, `he told me how and why Germany would lose the war.'

In the years that followed, Mottu was to meet many of Blankenhorn's colleagues. On the invitation of Adam von Trott, a German Rhodes Scholar, Mottu flew to Berlin in November 1942 to meet some of those who were not able to get out of Germany. Mottu was particularly struck by his talk with Hans-Bernd von Haften, a senior official in the foreign ministry, who was wrestling with the issue of whether a Christian had the right to rebel against his government and to make an attempt on the life of his head of state.

It was in that same year that Mottu began to realize that the future of Europe would depend on new relations being established between France and Germany. As he told a colloquium at Geneva University many years later, `From 1942 onwards an idea germinated in my spirit that if our country escaped the hardship of war and occupation we would have a singular task at the end of the war to contribute to the reconstruction of Europe.' At Easter 1942 he even had the quiet certainty that `Caux is the place' for a centre of reconciliation.

Two years later Mottu was invited by Buchman to join him in the United States. With Switzerland surrounded by the enemy it seemed impossible. Mottu showed the telegram to the Swiss Foreign Minister, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, with whom he was working. Pilet-Golaz encouraged him to go. Shortly afterwards von Trott came to see him and also supported the idea. So, a few days after the Allied landing in Normandy, Mottu found himself meeting with von Trott and others in Stuttgart. The coup was imminent and he was entrusted with memorizing and taking to Washington the names of those who were to form the new government. It was the last the young Swiss and young German were to see of each other.

To Mottu's pain President Roosevelt refused to take seriously the reality of this internal opposition to Hitler. On 20 July Mottu got the news of the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life. `It was a terrible blow,' he says. `On the one hand I thought of all the friends whose lives were now in danger, and on the other I knew that the war would go on even longer.' What shattered him most was that the news was not taken seriously by the US media. A few days later came the confirmation that von Trott and others of his friends had been executed.

After the war, Mottu and two Swiss collegues, Robert Hahnloser and Erich Peyer, decided to act on buying the centre in Caux. Ninety-five Swiss families joined in to make it possible.

After the first conference in Caux, in 1946, it was a survivor of the plot against Hitler who helped assemble the first delegation of Germans to come there. Clarita von Trott, Adam's widow, was also in Caux. She made such an impression on the passionately anti-German French leader, Irene Laure, that Laure's attitude changed completely and she became a trailblazer for Franco-German unity. In Mottu's mind the martyrs and the survivors of the 20 July plot `played an indirect but indispensable part in establishing the contacts which led to the creation of the conference centre'.

The young Swiss people who in 1946 opened Mountain House--Mottu was then 32--had a largeness of aim that inspires respect. But they could hardly have imagined that 50 years on Swiss dignitaries would come to Caux to hear Philippe Mottu deliver a Jubilee address. He directed the closing words to those under 30 today. He described the challenges faced by his generation at the end of World War II. To answer them, he said, they gave themselves with everything they had. On the way they made many mistakes. What mattered was not successes but the determination to try to answer the real problems of the time. `Often as I think of my grandchildren's future,' he said, `it distresses me to see so many difficulties pile up. Yet when I reflect on the way in which we have been led step by step in the course of our lives, I am full of hope for yours.'