Three years ago I would have come here to talk about an idea. I would have told you what a great thing the Peace Corps could be. How much it would do for America and for the world.
I would have been trying to sell that idea -- sell it to the Congress, to the American people and, in particular, to the people we hoped would serve.
Around the world -- three years ago -- our reservoir of understanding was perilously low, and the landscape was getting drier. Looking around us in the world we saw the drab mud flats of misconception, the muck of thoughtless and ignorant hostility, the stagnant sloughs of unreasoning fear.
It was not our ideals that were in question. Those ideals were respected abroad, perhaps more than at home.
I have seen “Give me liberty or give me death” or “All men are created equal” scrawled on city walls in the new countries of the world.
When in 1955 President Sukarno opened the Bandung Conference he began by saying. “We are meeting on the 180th anniversary of the ride of Paul Revere. The American Revolution is the spiritual ancestor of our own revolution.”
No, it was not America’s ideals that were questioned. What people doubted was our ability to live and act in the spirit of these ideals.
Not all the doubters were foreigners. Many were Americans. They doubted our will and our dedication. They feared that we did not practice what we so nobly preached ---They also feared the misuse, the blind use and the dumb use of our great power.
And, sad to say, the actions of some overseas Americans had increased the doubts. So had the failures of our democratic society at home.
However, there were some people --most importantly, President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson -who believed that the Peace Corps could help. Risks, yes, but opportunities, too. “Fain would I climb for I fear the fall; if you fear the fall, why climb at all?” And so we began. Speaking to you today, I realize how far we’ve come.
The Peace Corps has the combined endorsement of the New York Post and the Los Angeles Times -- of Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater.
Bob Taft III is a Peace Corps Volunteer. He’s teaching in Tanganyika.
I should note that his presence in the Peace Corps has been a domestic as well as an overseas asset. When the Peace Corps budget last came up in Congress, his father, Congressman Robert Taft, confided to me that he had never been in such a dilemma in his life: If he voted our full request, Charlie Halleck would be unhappy. But if he didn’t, his son would blaze away from 5,000 miles.
Well, blood turned out to be thicker than politics and we got Bob Taft’s vote.
And overseas the clear waters of understanding are beginning to fill the leaks. The freshet which is released by a single Volunteer is small of itself. Together these new springs are filling the brooks, and moving the rivers.
We now have 7,500 Volunteers working in 2,500 locations in 45 countries -- 334 of them from Ohio, 8 from the University of Akron.
In the first four months of this year we received applications from 22,000 Americans. This is 50% more than applied in this time last year.
Our Volunteers are working overseas without special privileges, under rigorous conditions, and without pay.
These Volunteers are a visible expression of America’s commitment to fundamental human ideals. They are proof of our concern for the aspirations of developing peoples. They are America’s answer to those who doubt that most basic principle -- that those who dwell on earth, white and black, rich and poor, believing and unbelieving, are all in the same boat.
I can think of no group which has a greater stake than lawyers do in the concept of order and orderly change. Yet, have you ever stopped to realize that order is too often the luxury of a developed society, like air conditioning, television, or automobiles. Order in change is the key missing element in many of the places where Peace Corps Volunteers are working.
When President Kennedy was assassinated, the world shared with the United States a deep sense of loss and shock. Former President David Ben Gurion of Israel described it to me as the “first worldwide mourning in the history of man”
But much of the developing world did not share our knowledge that there would be an orderly continuity of government.
In some measure this can be explained by ignorance of our ways. On a deeper level I think it reflects ignorance of the possibility of orderly change -- that orderly change is one of mane s alternatives.
In many countries, particularly in Latin America, this is the lesson Peace Corps Volunteers are able to teach.
For example, in Colombia more than 600 Volunteers are helping communities organize themselves for action, for the first time. For the first time they know that such action can be effective. They are building their own schools, roads and aqueducts.
What roll does the Peace Corps Volunteer play in this process? He is not the provider of money or equipment or supplies. He does not live in the capital city, making periodic visits to the country to see how -- or if -- his gifts are being used.
He lives with the villagers. He shares their lot. He demonstrates by example how they can use the resources available to them to improve their situation. He’s a catalyst in group action. For the first time local citizens are learning the power of working together. In many ways this knowledge is more important than the schoolhouse with its new teacher, the road which now leads to market, or even the drinkable water available in town for the first time.
I believe that human development is the essential ingredient for economic development. It makes possible the belief that change can be achieved without bloody revolution.
This is already changing attitudes about America. More important, it is changing ideas about the meaning of a democratic order in society.
In Arequipa, Peru, a group of Communists met last October and demanded the immediate expulsion of the Peace Corps from the country. They were answered, but not by the Peace Corps, or by the Peruvian Government, or by the landowners. They were answered by the slum dwellers in Arequipa.
“We raise the most energetic protest”, the slum dwellers leader said, “against the attitude of a few persons who did not see the reality of the benefits being received by thousands of workers. The Peace Corps Volunteers are one with the slum dwellers of Arequipa.
The Peace Corps now has 19 Volunteer lawyers in Africa.
When the first Peace Corps lawyers project was announced, an official said, “Every lawyer wants to be a founding father; these guys are going to get their chance. “In a particularly important way these men and women are helping to create a more orderly process in the countries where they serve.
These “founding fathers” have been working in Africa since September. Seven are in Liberia, five in Nigeria, three in Ethiopia, three in Nyasaland, and one in Sierra Leone.
David B. Strain, of Wyoming, Ohio, is one of the Volunteers assigned to the Ministry of Justice in Enugu, the capital of the Eastern Region of Nigeria.
Some are working with the local court system. Tom McCarthy, a 1963 graduate of St. Johns Law School, is in Kaduna, Nigeria. He is an instructor of local courts. He inspects court records and investigates complaints. But his real job is training the staffs of the courts in the Northern Region of Nigeria.
I go to a provincial center each month and give a 10-day course--on just about anything. The native courts authority brings court personnel which needs training.
If this system works--the commissioner will unleash a flock of inspector teachers to cover the north-teaching the basic material so penal code, criminal procedure and civil procedure, court administration and records.
This system was first tried at Kano, Nigeria, and it worked well. The Kano court now has at least one clerk who knows how to run the court.
The problems are many. The challenge is high. What law applies? Where does one find written case materials? Books are scarce. How do you get students to learn more about the process of legal analysis when they have been used to accepting Hornbook law? How best to collect the cases of the country, which will no doubt be of incomparably more interest to the student than cases from abroad?
Eleven of the Volunteer lawyers are engaged in some kind of law teaching. Five are drawing up Federal and legal administration procedures. Three are working directly with Justice Ministries in legal jobs.
The job of working in a strange legal system is not the only frustration. A British-trained lawyer, after looking over an honor graduate’s record from Harvard, said, “Huh....yes...Harvard...well, I guess he’ll do. Having gone to law school at Yale, I can understand his reaction.
The Volunteers are having the experience of a life time. Sandra Neese, a graduate of Indiana Law School in 1961, teaching at the University of Liberia, put it like this:
My experience in Liberia can be summarized by saying I am suffering a little, contributing something, and benefiting immensely.
The Peace Corps lawyers can make a great contribution. Our Constitution is the oldest written federal constitution functioning in the world today. The American experience can be of great use to the African nations which have adopted written constitutions and are beginning to interpret and apply them to changing social patterns.
As Justice Douglas has pointed out, our experience with the Federal system will be helpful to the developing nations, and Peace Corps lawyers will provide the crucial human bridge to carry over this experience. The problem of creating a single nation out of peoples with differing languages, religions, and loyalties has led a number of countries to adopt the Federal system much as we did almost 200 years ago. Justice Douglas pointed out that American lawyers “are now needed... in the difficult process of making these political experiments work.”
It is hard to believe that three short years ago the Peace Corps was viewed with skepticism, cynicism, pessimism and dismay. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it is rewarding to note that other nations are following our lead.
In the past year over half of the West European countries have established or expanded Peace Corps programs of their own. We may soon see the Peace Corps idea become one of the most widespread national movements for Peace the world has yet seen.
But I am not able to conclude without returning to the theme I touched upon when I began these remarks to you today. Three years ago the doubters and skeptics questioned our dedication to the American ideal, both abroad and at home. The Peace Corps has helped to overcome those doubts abroad. How about the worlds doubts about American ideals at home? It is now 10 years since the Supreme Court directed us to implement our basic principles and our Constitution on the question of race. It has been 10 years of progress and of change. These 10 years have also produced their share of tragedies--in Birmingham, Oxford, Jackson, Little Rock—and also in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Akron.
These 10 years have resulted in the placing of only 1 per cent of the Negro students in our southern states in biracial schools. At this rate, full integration will take us a thousand years.
If we have learned anything in the Peace Corps we have learned that our aspirations, both at home and abroad, are cut from the same piece of cloth. Our failures also constitute a seamless garment which America wears wherever she is present in any corner of the globe. The Peace Corps represents a single idea in our society. This is the value of men--human skills, enthusiasms, hopes and principles. These are more important abroad than currency stabilization, development loans, power projects, or trade negotiations-important though these other things may be.
At home we are learning too slowly that human values are more important than property values, and that we must heal the body of our own society, and make it whole.
Men of your profession have led the lawful revolution in America. Through the Peace Corps they are providing leadership for lawful change beyond our shores. Human beings are our business in the Peace Corps. They are your business in the law. Both of us have work to do.
