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There is still much to do. For one thing, there is that home-town image of the Peace Corps marching off to save the world. It bothers the volunteers. Said Shriver in his congressional message: "As the Peace Corps enters its third year, volunteers and staff alike have the feeling that the Peace Corps stories most often repeated are too glamorous, too glowing, too pat. Few of these stories talk of the day-to-day problems, the frustrations, the harsh disappointments, and the serious occupational hazards—as one volunteer put it—of 'dysentery and boredom.' In a sense, the most unsettling challenge the volunteer faces is his publicity. A generous world press has drawn an unvarying image of volunteers effortlessly spouting Pushtu, Swahili, or Tagalog, of volunteers winning legions of friends while transforming economies ... To sum up: while the Peace Corps may not be as good as its reputation, it is almost as good as its intentions."
That sounds just about right to the U.S. and to many other countries. Hearing about the work of the Peace Corpsmen, one country after another has asked to be included in the program. Where Peace Corpsmen have already been sent, requests have come in for more. Even Nkrumah's Ghana, where government-run, Communist-lining newspapers still rail at the Peace Corpsmen as "agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency," the government itself has urgently requested that the 113-man Peace Corps contingent be doubled. In Nigeria, where poor Margery Michelmore caused all that commotion, the present group of 297 teachers is being increased, at Nigerian request, to more than 600. Says a top official of the Nigerian Ministry of Education: "There is not one of the various foreign aid schemes working in this country that can beat the Peace Corps."
The 13 Imitators. Such has been the history of the Peace Corps that it has inspired, in the two short years of its existence, no fewer than twelve other nations to try to follow suit. They are: Argentina, Belgium, El Salvador, France, Great Britain, Honduras, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, The Netherlands and West Germany. Last January, an International Peace Corps Secretariat, geared to building more Peace Corps from more countries, was set up in Washington. Just last week President Kennedy (who was accompanied on his European trip by his sister, Sargent Shriver's wife Eunice, standing in for the expectant Mrs. Kennedy as the feminine presence) spoke at the inauguration of West Germany's aborning Peace Corps. He predicted: "Germans will find their reward not here, pursuing their private pursuits, but in some far-off country."
Perhaps the truest measure of the U.S. Peace Corps—of its creed, its ideals, its constructive naivete and its basic worth—was put by a Peace Corpsman who died in the line of duty. Just before he was killed in a plane crash in Colombia while returning to his Peace Corps mission from a short holiday, David Crozier, 23, of West Plains, Mo., wrote to his parents: "Should it come to it, I had rather give my life trying to help someone than to give my life looking down a gun barrel at them."
Looking down the gun barrel is sometimes necessary. But Sarge Shriver and his Peace Corpsmen have at least started to make helping people a practical, and perhaps historic, alternative.