Now it’s your turn.
The Government of the United States, and the philosophy of man and conception of God upon which it rests, are in your hands.
You are going to determine whether the American Revolution is to be preserved and perpetuated. In facing this responsibility you will be shaping the world to come. You will be determining the character of the society your own children will inherit.
Today, we Americans are rediscovering some of the basic elements of our revolution. We are also waking up to the realization that mere talk about that revolution is no substitute for action.
It’s not enough to be a son or daughter of the American revolution. We must be parents, you must be parents, propagators of American revolutionary doctrine. The world wants “our revolution” not the monolithic, authoritarian, compulsory systems of Communism or Fascism. The world wants the vision of the free society created by Washington and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt. The heart of that vision was well expressed by John Quincy Adams in 1821 when he said:
“America, in the assembly of nations, has uniformly spoken among them the language of equal liberty, equal justice and equal rights.” No racial, political, religious, national or geographical barriers were applied by John Quincy Adams to the belief that “all men are created equal.” This was a universal truth, applicable to every man, everywhere.
These American principles have swept all over the modern world. In new, young nations I have seen slogans scrawled in English on the walls of buildings ---''Give me liberty or give me death!” -- “All men are created equal!”
The people of these countries want the same objectives we have pursued for 200 years: Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, the Consent of the Governed, the Right of the People. It was no accident that President Sukarno of Indonesia opened the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian people in 1955 with these words: “We are meeting on the 180th anniversary of the ride of Paul Revere. The American revolution is the spiritual ancestor of our own revolution.” These ambitions of former colonial peoples offer an unprecedented opportunity to America--and to your generation in particular. Never has there been a time in which scores of nations were voluntarily asking one nation for the spirit of its own free, democratic revolution. Guns, yes. Capital goods, yes. Grants and loans, yes. But as an associate of Mahatma Ghandi said to me in India: “Yours was the first successful revolution for the common men in modern times. Your Peace Corps must touch the idealism of America and bring that to us! Can you do it?
Two years ago, at the beginning of the Peace Corps, I was frequently challenged by such questions. U Nu, the famous Prime Minister of Burma, said to me: “Mr. Shriver, will the Peace Corps Volunteers have the same zeal and enthusiasm for Democracy as the Chinese have for Communism today? Do you really believe that a young American from Kokomo, Indiana, can compete with the Chinese Communists who have offered to come here and help us?”
Two years ago, the skeptics and the cynics were convinced that modern Americans were too flabby in body, too flaccid in spirit, to meet the rigorous challenges of life in the underdeveloped world.
But today, we know from experience that the skeptics and cynics and the doubters were wrong.
Thousands of Americans have responded to the challenge of the Peace Corps. Thousands have proved that they are able to learn unusual languages, eat unusual and different foods, abide by unusual and different laws, accept unusual and different customs, work under different and foreign regulations. And they have proved their competence on the job. They have achieved popularity with the common man. They have been accepted by high political authorities. They have changed the slogan “Yankee Go Home” into a new world-wide cry: “Send us more Peace Corps Volunteers!” And their average age is 25--not much older than most of you Springfield graduates today.
No country anywhere has yet requested a Peace Corps Volunteer to leave because of unsatisfactory performance on the job, or offensive conduct of a personal or social nature. No one in the Peace Corps has been declared persona non grata by any government anywhere.
This record of performance has answered the original questions, but it has not silenced the questioners themselves. Now they are saying, “What difference does it make? There are too few people in the Peace Corps to make a significant impression on the ignorance, poverty, or disease of nations.” And this opinion is usually followed by another, “We can’t afford it. We must balance the budget first. We are threatening the integrity of the dollar by all of this spending. We must retrench, retract, we are not financially able to send more Peace Corps Volunteers abroad.”
To them, I say -- Are we in our times less convinced, less resolute, less visionary in our desire to propagate the ideas of the American Revolution than Washington and Jefferson who spoke of universal liberty when there were only 13 states and 4,000,000 inhabitants in our whole country?
Last month I was in Guinea--the newly independent country in West Africa. I visited the headquarters of the labor unions. In the reception room, I picked up and read pamphlets attaching the United States, ridiculing the Peace Corps. These pamphlets written in English were printed and published in Communist China, and distributed all over Africa -- 10,000 miles from China.
I have seen “technicians” from Hungary and Czechoslovakia building roads, teaching in schools, designing bridges in the Far East and in Africa.
And now in Latin America, the agents of international Communism, trained in Cuba, are beginning to infiltrate into the rural villages and urban slums of friendly Spanish-speaking nations.
Are they richer than we that they can afford to send their people and their literature around the world?
Are they more zealous for their beliefs than we for ours?
Two weeks ago, I testified before a Congressional Committee. One of the Congressmen mocked at our Peace Corps contingent of 21 physical education teachers and athletic coaches destined for Indonesia. He first challenged the idea of sending Americans to Indonesia merely, as he phrased it, to teach them “games "--and then he ridiculed the idea that 21 coaches could have any useful effect in a country with a population of 100,000,000 people.
To him I was able to tell the true story of a conversation which took place in my own office only a few days before my appearance “on the Hill” before the Congressional Committee.
My visitor was an Indonesian official. He told me there had been more than 50 protest meetings against the Peace Corps in his country. Dozens of newspaper articles attacked us. Demands were made that the Indonesian Government refuse to permit our 21 Volunteers to land on Indonesian soil.
“Why?” I asked him. “Why is there such concern over 21 American coaches. You would think,” I said to him, “that we were starting germ warfare in Indonesia.”
To which he replied-
“In a certain sense, Mr. Shriver, you are. In Indonesia we have many more than 21 Americans, and if these Peace Corps Volunteers were simply 21 more Americans, there would be no interest in them at all. But these Volunteers come to Indonesia representing an idea, the Peace Corps idea. That’s why there is opposition. Your Volunteers may well infect thousands of Indonesians with the ideas of a free, democratic society. In that sense you may be starting germ warfare.”
Today, as I look upon the well-trained, thoughtful graduates of Springfield College, I wonder how many of you realize that the world is crying for your services. Now, this very month, in 50 nations, you are needed.
At Peace Corps headquarters we have hundreds of requests inviting us to send more and more teachers, farmers, youth leaders, nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers, coaches, recreation leaders, and others who possess the courage and skill, the intelligence and compassion to serve the cause of peace.
The spirit in which our Volunteers go forth is just as important as the skill they carry with them, for theirs is a profoundly moral challenge. They are being asked not only to help the people of these young nations achieve economic independence, they are being invited to reaffirm our own fundamental commitment to a just and free society for all peoples; they are being invited to reveal the revolutionary nature of our democratic society and to show that such a society offers the greatest meaning for the most people, because in it, each and every man is of transcendent importance.
More is at stake in this effort than the defeat of Communism, or the winning of new sources of wealth, or even the affection of the world’s peoples.
The character of American society itself is at stake.
Are we going to fill these urgent requests for help?
Or, are we going to balance the budget first?
Are we going to retrench and retract?
Or, are we going to bring the vision of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams to a spiritually hungry world?
I’m not arguing for “foreign aid.” The Peace Corps is not “foreign aid.”
We give away nothing. Ninety percent of our money is spend on American citizens--75 percent of it right here in the U.S.A.
I’m not arguing for a “do good” purely humanitarian effort. I am proposing a new conception of citizenship in a Democracy. I believe that all citizens, young and old, should give a significant part of their lives to the voluntary service of their country and their fellow man, especially those most in need.
That’s what the Peace Corps stands for.
We draft no one. We expect everyone to join freely and remain freely.
We pay minimum subsistence and allowances--less than a private in the Army. No one should join the Peace Corps to get rich.
We give minimum supervision on the job. We expect our Volunteers to be mature, intelligent Americans capable of “bossing” themselves.
We have no “party line,” no firm answers to questions about race relations, or politics. We expect our Volunteers to think for themselves, speak for themselves, read for themselves, and behave themselves.
Because we have such standards and requirements, we attract a special type of American--the kind who asks what he can give, not what he can get. And, as a result, the Peace Corps Volunteers get more than they give.
They come back with languages and invaluable skills for foreign work. Scholarships, teaching jobs, government service, business and a host of other opportunities compete for the attention of these new Americans. But, more important, they come back with a new maturity and with the knowledge that they have participated in the world’s great events. We know now that the career aspirations of returning Volunteers are different from the ones they had when they went, and they want jobs after the Peace Corps which offer full scope for service jobs which make a difference.
Like Springfield, the Peace Corps is a preparation and an education. All of us, if we expect to grow throughout our lives, must successively renew this process and at a higher level of achievement. Our first returning Volunteers will be here in a few weeks. They will be graduates of the Peace Corps. For them, there will be once again a new start. For them, as for you, at the end there is commencement.
