The Peace Corps in Our Past

Abstract

America is a land of habits, attitudes, or re sponses, whether one wishes to call them traditions or not. Many of these have been agents preparing the way for the ap pearance of the Peace Corps. The concept of an American world mission, first associated with Protestantism but broad ened to include world peace and the dissemination of our tools of economic success, certainly falls into this category. An interest in the fate of common men everywhere, expressed through numerous privately financed American relief and de velopment projects overseas, is another instance of an attitude which has been extended by the Peace Corps. John F. Ken nedy's 1960 campaign proposal came after a decade of dis cussion and lobbying on behalf of an official "people-to-people" program involving volunteer technicians. The Peace Corps is a product of American anti-Communist foreign policy. But more than that, it is an expression of ongoing American opti misms in the fate of man. Whether Americans, who have not yet succeeded in making their own land a model of brotherly harmony and general prosperity, can succeed in their global enterprise, remains to be seen.