GO EVERYWHERE, YOUNG MAN

The "Peace Corps" Has a Working Precedent

IN San Francisco just before the election, Candidate Kennedy proposed a dramatic scheme: a "peace corps" of "talented young men" to work in the world's poor countries for three years, as an alternative to the draft. Said he: "There is not enough money in all America to relieve the misery of the underdeveloped world in a giant and endless soup kitchen. But there is enough know-how and enough knowledgeable people to help those nations help themselves." Skeptics at once envisioned ponytailed coeds and crew-cut Jack Armstrongs playing Albert Schweitzer--an appalling army of innocents abroad. Nonetheless, Kennedy was flooded with enthusiastic letters. In a Gallup poll, 71% of Americans backed the corps; 66% wanted their sons to join it.

Now the idea is moving toward reality. Last year Congress authorized a study of the idea (well before Kennedy proposed it) by the Colorado State University Research Foundation, which has since polled experts and visited a dozen countries to find what the corps should be and do.

Last week, after a hurry-up call from the Administration, a Colorado team headed by Engineer Maurice Albertson arrived in Washington with clear recommendations.

Who Should Go? The team has already found projects abroad that could use 5,000 corpsmen by July 1962. It advocates "cream of the crop" men and women, aged 20 to 30, who have specific skills needed in the host country. Unusually mature 18-year-olds would be acceptable, and also married couples if both had a skill. Applicants would have to pass severe screening, aimed at banning adventurers, dreamers, misanthropes and mercenaries. Corpsmen would get up to nine months' training, then serve two years. The pay: about $80 a month, or roughly what a U.S. Army private makes. Corpsmen would be draft-deferred--but not exempt from later service.

What Should They Do? Unskilled labor is abundant in underdeveloped countries; so are high-level foreign experts. The lack is skilled people at operational level, especially teachers. Half the projects cited by the Colorado team involve teaching English as a second language. Also needed: teachers of science, vocational skills, home economics, child care--and literacy, in a world that is two-fifths illiterate. In addition, LT.S. and U.N. experts need corpsmen to assist remote villages in farming, building, and even sports.

Who Should Command? Corpsmen would go in teams of five to ten with a topnotch leader. The GHQ: a small, new Government agency, probably headed by President Kennedy's brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver Jr., 45, a Chicago businessman. The agency would supply cash, corpsmen and coordination for the two main arms of the operation. In the U.S., private groups, such as foundations, universities, or the American Friends Service Committee, would propose projects abroad. In the host country, a binational board would have power to pass on projects and set local corps policy. The estimated cost is roughly $50 million a year.

Feeling Needed. The Colorado team is enthusiastic because it has already seen a similar "peace corps" working brilliantly. It is Britain's Voluntary Service Overseas, launched two years ago by Alec Dickson, 44, a longtime UNESCO social worker who saw a way to tap the energy and drive of young Englishmen. "People want to feel needed," says he, "but it's hard to get this feeling in affluent Western societies. You can't find it in Piccadilly or Times Square."

With help from British churchmen and the government, Dickson set up a middleman agency to recruit youths aged 18 to 24 for one year's service in underdeveloped countries, and he has been astonishingly successful. Though they get only subsistence pay and hard living, they stick: only two volunteers out of 165 have quit so far. In 25 countries, VSO currently has 87 public-school boys, factory apprentices, girls and university men--all working at everything from repairing bicycles in Kenya to aiding sick Eskimos in Labrador. Wrote one Southeast Asian official: "Send us the best you have, as many as possible, and as quickly as you can." The stripling volunteers have shouldered responsibilities that would turn a grownup grey--or green with envy. In Sarawak, a 19-year-old boy, lately a factory apprentice, is in sole charge of a primary school, a first-aid clinic and a rubber plantation. In the Solomon Islands, one pink-cheeked girl recently delivered a native woman's twins. In British Guiana, a 19-year-old is the only white person within 50 miles, does everything from mending Amerindians' canoes to teaching sewing to women.

Feeling Humbled. Ken Patton, 19, is currently charged with explaining Bechuanaland's new currency and constitution to 10,000 tribesmen. He wrote home recently: "I have organized the burial of corpses in lead-lined coffins; I designed an African school; I redesigned our hotel. I have collected debts, fobbed off would-be explorers, drawn up contracts, been out with geologists, examined poisoned calves, taken statements, invigilated exams, and run the district (such as I was able) when the district commissioner was away for ten days. So as you see, life is full, busy, interesting and great fun."

The fun is partly in being apprenticed to an emerging nation. "My only regret is that Africa has given me so much more than I have given Africa," reports one volunteer. Another says: "The confidence that Nigerians place in us is frightening, and I feel humbled."

VSO's youngsters have managed to shun adolescent do-goodery, allay nationalist suspicion, bypass fusty colonial British Blimps and get to the heart of the matter--youth-to-youth cooperation. As Founder Dickson puts it' "The fact is that a 19-year-old Western boy can get along better with a 19-year-old Chinese than with his own father." There is no real way to measure the result. It may be only coincidence that during last year's countrywide riots in Nyasaland, the one school in a 2,000-mile area that suffered no riots, sit-downs or lockouts was the one that had two VSO teachers. Perhaps the worth of it all is clearer in the simple report of one volunteer in Bechuanaland: "The veterinary officer here deals with foot-and-mouth disease among 60,000 cattle. Now that I am here, he only has to deal with 30,000."

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