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The Story of the Experiment in International Living PASSPORT TO FRIENDSHIP by William Peters An American girl sharing a room in a family compound in a remote village in India . . . A young Swedish boy trying to adapt to life as the "brother" of a college student in Pennsylvania . . . An American college boy in Nazi Germany, house guest of a German whose cousin is in a concentration camp . . . Here are the true adventures of young people trying to span the gulfs of culture, custom, language and tradition which separate the nations of the world. In Europe, Asia, North and South America, their experiences are as different as the countries they visit, to live, for a time, as members of foreign families. Their goals are those of The Experiment in International Living, the organization which made their adventures possible: to learn to live as other people do, to adapt to their ways, to become members of their families and, in the end, to understand and respect them as only a real friend could. This book is also an informal history of the Experiment, now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, and a partial biography of its founder, Donald B. Watt, who has successfully navigated most of the gulfs, actual and figurative, in the world. This is the story of young people who have proved their ability to be "at home" abroad and of what the experience has done for them. THE AUTHOR William Peters has been a successful freelance writer for the past four years. He has written stories and articles for many national magazines including Look, McCall's, The Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Collier's, Redbook, Sports Illustrated, Coronet, This Week, and The New Republic. His writing has covered such varied topics as medicine, crime, politics, sports personalities and race relations. Mr. Peters was graduated from Northwestern University. During World War II he served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps for four years. Following the war, he worked in public relations and on the editorial staffs of two magazines. In 1955 he received the Howard W. Blakesly Award of the American Heart Association for an article on heart surgery. He is also the recipient of two citations of the Benjamin Franklin Award Committee for articles on civil liberties and race relations. Born in San Francisco, Mr. Peters has also lived in Seattle, New York, Chicago, and the suburbs of Los Angeles. Research for this book took him to seven countries.   Pearl S. Buck writes in the Foreword to PASSPORT TO FRIENDSHIP "The more widely the Experiment is practiced the more swift and the more powerful its influence will be. Since every good work depends for its existence and growth upon the number of good people who support it, let us, good people, dedicate ourselves to the building and perfecting of this first essential to peace-an appreciative understanding between the peoples of the earth. Toward this end The Experiment in International Living offers a most practical means." Author William Peters sharing Experiment snapshots with three former Experimenters. Left to right: Joan Williams, Mr. Peters, Clarissa Webster and Henry Borgese.

The quest for the raw material from which this book has been written has taken me by automobile, railroad, boat, plane and even helicopter to dozens of cities and towns in seven countries. In the course of this fascinating search, I met and interviewed literally hundreds of people. Without exception, their contributions helped me toward a more complete understanding of The Experiment in International Living and what it has been doing this past quarter-century.

From the officials and staff of the Experiment, in the United States and abroad, I have received unanimous and complete cooperation. Records and correspondence has been made available to me without question or qualification. Translators and interpreters have been volunteered and both search and research undertaken in my behalf.

A few of the individuals whose contributions of time and effort have made this book possible appear as characters in it. To them, and to the many more whose help will be less evident to the reader, I extend my sincere thanks. In particular, I am indebted to the following, all of whom contributed more than perhaps they realize: The Payne Fund, Inc., Dr. and Mrs. Randolph Major, Dr. and Mrs. Stuart Mudd, Mrs. W. I. Westervelt, Dr. and Mrs. George B. Broad, the late David Epstein, Dr. and Mrs. Kenneth E. Appel, Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Gillen, Mr. and Mrs. Horace Fleisher, Mr. and Mrs. A. Bud Trowbridge, Mrs. Annie Watt Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Watt, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Heidelbaugh, and Mrs. Rex G. Neaverson.

WILLIAM PETERS

Pelham Manor
New York

Foreword

Twenty-five years ago Donald Watt, a young American, not different from millions of other young men, conceived the idea that if people knew each other well enough through their various ways of living and thinking, a human relationship would result which, based upon mutual understanding, could mean peace on earth and goodwill among men. The idea is simple and certainly not new. The young man, however, decided to put it into practice in its most concrete form. This was really new and often not at all simple. He decided to gather a few American boys and take them to some foreign country and let them get acquainted with boys there. He called it The Experiment in International Living.

The first experiment was a boys' camp in Europe. It was not a success from Donald Watt's point of view. The boys of each nationality and language, three in number, tended to remain in their native groups. He decided thereafter to change the unit from group to individual and to substitute the family for the camp. Individual boys, and later girls, lived with individual families in countries other than their own.

From this time on The Experiment in International Living has been a brilliant success, penetrating into twenty-seven countries around the world and with ramifications and influence incalculable for good.

In this day and age when ideas and ideologies abound to the confusion of all concerned, the direct force of a basic concept expressed in practical application is overwhelming in its power. The dynamic is the wisdom of using everywhere the family as the common denominator for human understanding. Living together, the stranger within the household, brings mutual benefit to all through mutual exchange of knowledge and mutual sharing of daily life.

Whether the Experiment can influence the world in time to save us from the disaster of war is problematic, for war is the ultimate result of total lack of appreciative understanding between peoples and persons. One thing is sure, however, and this is that the more widely the Experiment is practiced the more swift and the more powerful its influence will be. Since every good work depends for its existence and growth upon the number of good people who support it, let us, good people, dedicate ourselves to the building and perfecting of this first essential to peace---an appreciative understanding between the peoples of the earth. Toward this end The Experiment in International Living offers a most practical means.

PEARL S. BUCK

The Experiment in International Living, like virtually all experiments, owes much to the previous work of many people in many lands over a period of many years. Indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, since the problems to which the Experiment addresses itself are, like most human problems, as old as the species Homo sapiens, the attempt to solve them is surely as old as the first incident in human history in which one man laid down his club to grip the hand of another in friendship. For The Experiment in International Living is, in fact, an experiment in human relations.

But if the Experiment is merely the latest approach, or even among the latest approaches, to an age-old problem, there is much about it that is unique, that is new and that is encouraging. For almost alone among the many organizations, living and dead, which have attacked the problems of war, of international distrust, of what the social scientists call xenophobia and of plain, old-fashioned chauvinism, the Experiment has chosen to attack these problems in terms of individual people rather than whole peoples. In a day when the complexity of even the simplest of social problems often raises the plaintive cry, "But what can I, personally, do?" the Experiment's specific answer in the area of what is undoubtedly the world's most urgent social problem is singularly refreshing.

For here, in the over-all program of the Experiment, there is room for all of us to take part, if not in one area, then in another. And here, where so much needs to be done to help others to that high plateau of understanding which each of us secretly believes he has achieved, there is a unique opportunity to test ourselves.

What is The Experiment in International Living? Like most experiments, it begins with a carefully considered plan. The plan, like that of most continuous experiments, is subject to change, to evolution, to adaptation and adjustment. What it is today is slightly different from what it was yesterday or will be tomorrow.

Like most experiments, it involves the use of a number of materials---in this case, people. Like most experiments, it requires the use of a laboratory---in this case a home. And like most experiments, it demands preparation, a method, a mixing of materials, time for various actions and reactions to take place and a yardstick for judging results. Again, like most experiments, its results vary with all the variables of material, laboratory, preparation, method, time and measurement.

Take one individual, one reasonably intelligent, tactful, healthy and well-adjusted individual between the ages of, say, sixteen and thirty. Endow that individual with an honest desire to understand why people in a foreign country live and think and behave as they do. Add a willingness to suspend judgment, to try to live and act and think in the mysterious ways of those foreigners for at least eight weeks. Sprinkle with curiosity, good will, a sense of humor and a genuine interest in people. Inject a knowledge of the language of the foreigners sufficient to communicate with them---if, indeed, they speak a different language. You now have one of the basic materials of your experiment.

To ten such individuals, preferably equally divided between the sexes, add a leader familiar with the country of the foreigners, trained in a particular kind of relaxed leadership, able to lead by example and inspiration rather than command, and able to follow where the group is able to lead.

Now, find an individual in that foreign land endowed with the respect of his neighbors, with a knowledge of his city and his country, willing to work hard for the success of the experiment. He and the group leader are your laboratory technicians. Send him out in his community to find ten families with intellectual curiosity and a desire to know, as a son or daughter, one of the ten young individuals of the group. If possible, have him find families in which there is at least one young person about the age of the young stranger. Let him explain to the families what the experiment is about; have him show them how their part in it can provide them with an experience as fascinating in its way as that of the young person they take into their home. These families are further materials of the experiment. Their homes are your laboratory.

Prepare your materials. Instill in them a knowledge of the method you will use. Tell them the results of similar experiments.

Now, mix. Move your group with its leader to the foreign site of your laboratory. Place one group member with each family. Place the leader with the local representative who has found the families. Allow time: about four weeks. Then assemble the group and their young hosts. Put them on bicycles, a canal boat, in the mountains, in kayaks or on foot and have them travel together within the hosts' country for two to three weeks. Take them back to the homes for a farewell. Then separate the young people---if you can.

Did the experiment succeed? Ask the young people and their group leader. Did they have a good time? Did they make friends with their foreign families? Have they learned anything? Have their attitudes changed?

Ask the families. Was the experience fun? Did they learn anything new? Would they like to see their young guests again?

And then go back, if you can, five, ten, twenty years later. Dissect from the lives of these people the influence of that two-month experience. Impossible? Probably. But perhaps there are hints, clues, suggestions. Hardly an accurate yardstick? Hardly. But the social sciences---and human relations is the basis of them all---have yet to devise a better one.

This, then, is an experiment in international living. What it has to do with war, with international distrust, with national prejudice and hatred and chauvinism is the question this books seeks to answer. Because the materials of the Experiment are people, the book is about people. Because the history of the Experiment is a history of individual experiences, the book relates the experiences of many individuals, at many times, in many places. And because the founder of the Experiment, Donald B. Watt, has, in the quarter-century of its history, injected into it so much of himself, of his ideas, his struggles, his beliefs and his influence, the book itself is pervaded by the spirit of this man.

The Experiment in International Living celebrated its twenty-fifth summer of operation in 1956. A genuinely international organization, with permanent headquarters in eighteen countries, it has been responsible for sending or receiving people to or from more than forty countries. At one time or another in its history, people from each of the following lands have been involved, directly and personally, in the Experiment. It is to them, the people of the Experiment, that this book is dedicated: