and respect for them. Anyone else who starts to run them down
will receive a sharp rejoinder. It has often been a joy to see Wim
with a group of colleagues or fellow members of Committee
on a 'day off' in the middle of a meeting, or at that glorious
moment when all is done that can be done and there are yet a
few hours to spare. Then--to the astonishment of newer
acquaintances--a rather 'puckish' Wim emerges, bent on some
exploit or expedition or celebration which is wholly irrelevant
and therefore just right for the occasion. It is in these 'off-
guard' moments, when all controversy and preoccupation are
dismissed, that many a church leader has had his loyalty to the
ecumenical movement most unusually confirmed.

How can one say more without a breach of confidence?
There must be hundreds of men and women who are proud
that they have Wim's friendship, who feel it gives a mark of
significance to lives which they know lack so many of the
notes that his possesses. The striking thing is the variety of these
men and women. They belong to all the generations of the
writers in this volume; they are of many races and confessions;
they are by no means all 'egg-heads' or 'high-brows'; their
conversation has been carried on in four different languages;
they are not all church-leaders or even churchmen; their
contacts with him have been of many different kinds at many
levels. But all would acknowledge a sense of exhilaration from
his zest for life, and a centrality of Christian purpose to which
his companionship has always stimulated them. That is the
basic reason for the character of this volume. Tributes to the
man himself would have tended to hide the axiom by which
he has always lived, that our sufficiency is of God.

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