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Inevitably, the Peace Corps has also had its internal problems. One young woman was fired from the corps after carrying on an open affair with a Filipino in her barrio (village). A 21-year-old volunteer was sent home on "sick leave" after marrying a native grandmother in Colombia. A man was transferred from his station in North Borneo after he got so carried away that he answered a call from his village's home guard last December during a border revolt, carried arms with the natives for a time. A few girls have been sent home pregnant; some men have contracted venereal disease. And in one quaint native hamlet, a corps leader was strolling down a street, chanced to see a Peace Corps Jeep parked in front of the town's biggest bawdyhouse. Seeing his duty, the official stomped into the house, collared the Peace Corps culprit and thundered: "Look, if you're going to a cathouse, O.K.—but for God's sake, don't go in Government transportation!"
By the Shirttail. The Peace Corps, then, is a loosely ruled, badly dressed, often complaining, yet highly motivated melting pot of individualists scattered through jungle, slum and mountain peak in some of the most backward countries of the world. At the same time, it is possibly the greatest single success the Kennedy Administration has produced.
Contrary to New Frontier legend, the Peace Corps was something John Kennedy barely caught by the shirttail. He never mentioned it during the presidential primaries in the spring of 1960, gave only two quick references and one real speech to the idea toward the end of his campaign that fall. In fact, five months before he was elected, Congress had already approved a bill, introduced by Wisconsin's Democratic Representative Henry Reuss, setting up a $10,000 study on the feasibility of a Peace Corps. Once in office, Kennedy saw the value of the idea and bought it in full.
He created the corps with an executive order in March 1961, put it under the wing of the State Department, and sent Shriver off on a monthlong, eight-nation tour to see if anyone was interested in inviting in some rosy American idealists. Shriver came back with a hatful of requests: India especially wanted agricultural types; Ghana needed plumbers, teachers, electricians; the Philippines wanted English teachers.
With such foreign requests to display, Shriver went up to Capitol Hill and found little real resistance to the idea of his program, although there was a good deal of doubt about how much money to spend on it. Shriver finally got $30 million to start in 1961, grinned happily when President Kennedy labeled him "the most effective lobbyist in Washington."