Yet Crane's new level of participation, which Hayek had so long sought, was not without its complications. As Crane grew more active as a fundraiser, he also began to try to intervene more directly in the internal life of the Society—leading to a set of conflicts that are entirely absent from the official history of the MPS. Because Crane was raising money, he sought at many points leading up to the meeting to influence the program and even the membership of the group. Commenting on a draft of the program, Crane wrote, "I only hope there is no slip-up by which any compromisers with basic principles would get on the program. That sort of thing seemed to me to be very regrettable at St. Moritz, but using the program that you have laid out it is not to be anticipated at Princeton." He was especially concerned with the chairmen that Hayek would select, writing that he hoped they would be "men of extraordinary competence and soundness." After reading an essay by Wilhelm Röpke, Crane wrote Hayek an anxious letter, expressing fears that Röpke would "attack laissez faire in the American meeting," and urging Hayek to think about how to have the "maximum degree of prevention of attacks on free enterprise in the American meeting."

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1465