How About Urdu?

Do you know Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Urdu, Mandarin, Arabic? If so, could you merely understand a foreigner speaking the language, or read a newspaper, give a short talk about the U.S., write a letter? Can you drive a tractor, run a bulldozer, handle surveyor's tools, operate a power boat, use radio equipment? Are you on any special diets? Do you suffer from allergies? How well do you really know the country in which you would like to serve?

Such probes into reality were the sharper points of a four-page questionnaire that was mailed out from Washington last week to 20,000 U.S. youngsters who had signaled an interest in John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps. Some 400 students from 300 colleges and universities couldn't wait. They met last week in Washington's American University for a Peace Corps conference called by the National Student Association and heard Peace Corps Boss Sargent Shriver warn: "This will not be a moonlight cruise on the Amazon or a pleasure vacation in Kashmir.'' Added Wisconsin's Congressman Henry S. Reuss, a sponsor of a youth corps bill: "You can expect freezing cold and burning heat, mud when it rains and dust when it doesn't, fleas and dysentery."

As the youngsters pressed for specifics, Shriver warned that the Peace Corpsman is not to propagandize in the land where he is sent or get involved in political crosscurrents. He should answer political questions "rationally, as an intelligent adult--but that doesn't mean you should get into fist fights with local Communists or get up on a soapbox." The volunteer who doesn't live as the native lives will be bounced. "The last thing we want is for Johnny to get money from home, buy himself an air-conditioned Cadillac and drive around Cambodia." Corps members will serve a tour of duty of about two years overseas, will get only a small living allowance but will be able to pick up accumulated pay of $50 to $75 a month when they come home. To the pretty coed who inquired about dating he indicated that neighborliness can be carried too far. "Remember that if a fellow takes out a young lady in Sicily and then doesn't marry her, she'd almost have the right to turn around and shoot him."

Shriver will have plenty of help in answering further questions. The President appointed a 33-member National Advisory Council for the Peace Corps, a galaxy of names reaching from Vice President Lyndon Johnson, chairman, to globe-trotting Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas, honorary chairman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Belafonte, International Business Machines President Thomas J. Watson Jr., and John D. Rockefeller IV, a Harvard senior. Another 180,000 forms will flood colleges, post offices and youth organizations in the next few weeks. By year's end Shriver expects to have 500 freshly scrubbed new U.S. emissaries overseas.

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