The Human Catalyst

William Delano blends in his own personality that unique combination of idealism and pragmatism which has become the Peace Corps' trademark. During World War II, he lef the protective towers of Yale to volunteer; after the war and his graduation from college he served for two years in Berlin with the American Friends Service Committee before entering Law School. He left a comfortable Wall Street law practice to join the Peace Corps--first as General Counsel, then as Special Assistant to Sargent Shriver, and now as Secretary General of the International Secretariat for Volunteer Service. Recalling his work as a national director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Delano speaks in broad terms of his "commitment to public service," his "duty" to society, the mission of educated Americans in a world of rising expectations.

And yet, there is another William Delano--the hard-nosed, forty-one-year-old Peace Corps recruiter and administrator--who says: "I don't want any saints or martyrs, people who just want to give and give and give without getting anything back. I want someone who knows what he's receiving, someone with his feet on the ground. The volunteer is going to be working his way through laziness, corruption, loneliness and self-pity; he'd better know what he's getting in return."

Delano himself has found public service "tremendously self fulfilling." He has watched the Peace Corps grow from a "Second Children's Crusade," as it was called by some Congressmen in 1960, to a force of 14000 volunteers spanning every continent. He has been a part of that growth, and he is proud of the achievement; but he entertains no illusions about the problems that remain. "We need more people with special skills in fields like engineering, chemistry and geology. We need doctors and agricultural experts--farmers who can talk to farmers." The Corps must find qualified applicants in greater quantity. Out of 50,000 requests from host countries this year, it expects to fill only 12,000. "We need better trained staff," Delano admits, "some old volunteers know more than their beginning directors." Mediocre language fluency remains a problem in some areas.

The most penetrating criticism, however, has come from people outside the Peace Corps, who acknowledge only its "fringe benefits" and argue that it should not be regarded as a substitute for real economic development. Eric Sevareid, for example, admits that the Corps gives "frustrated American youth a sense of mission" and adds "to our comprehension of other societies." But he warn that "while the Corps has something to do with spot benefits in a few isolated places, whether in sanitizing drinking water or building culverts its work has and can have, very little to do with the fundamental investments, reorganizations and reforms upon which the true and long-term economic development of backward countries depends."

Delano disagrees that the experience of volunteers abroad is merely a "fringe benefit." Young Americans acquire a perspective in foreign societies that is "fed back" to the entire society, broadening its values and preparing it for international responsibility. Delano argues that Sevareid underestimates the importance of social development--health, education and community organization--in economic development. The volunteer acts as a kind of "human catalyst." He emanates the idea: "We can do something about this.' " He initiates the process of organizing resources and assigning priorities. "The photographs show the same village, physically unaltered before and after," says Delano (referring to a Peace Corps pamphlet on Peru), "but because one gringo had the patience to stay and ask questions, something has changed: the people."

It is at this individual level that Delano believes the Peace Corps is ultimately most effective and rewarding. "These two years," he says, "can be a time for learning and growth--a time for finding out who you are and where you want to go." He compares the concept of a Peace Corps to Henry James' "moral equivalent of war." The struggle against economic undervelopment must involve the total commitment of human energy, the institutional invention and the mobilization of resources which in the past has occurred only during wartime.

Eventually, Delano will be leaving the Peace Corps to return to his law practice. He will remain active in civil liberties and he hopes to be "called again and again to serve in government." He deals with ideas in the currency of action. And the success of the Peace Corps has been due, in no small measure, to men like William Delano who, having fought one war on the battlefield, now seek a moral equivalent in public service.