Peace, It’s Wonderful

If the Peace Corps had been a new slimming compound it couldn’t have been launched with more superlatives, more promises of quick and lasting results, more assurances that it would kill all ills. And, as usual, the public has fallen for the fancy doubletalk and is ready to buy the advertised product without asking questions.

In this case, it is perhaps just as well because nobody connected with the Peace Corps appears to have done enough homework to know the answers. President Kennedy’s brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, who won quick confirmation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as director of the newly-created government agency, held a press conference on March 6 which shed little light on the future activities of the Peace Corps. His answers, to questions either began or ended with such phrases as, “I’d just like to make one comment, and it is that all of the things here are in the tentative planning stage,” or, “Yes, we plan to do that, but like everything else in the Peace Corps, it’s flexible.”

If the Peace Corps had been a new slimming compound it couldn’t have been launched with more superlatives, more promises of quick and lasting results, more assurances that it would kill all ills. And, as usual, the public has fallen for the fancy doubletalk and is ready to buy the advertised product without asking questions.

In this case, it is perhaps just as well because nobody connected with the Peace Corps appears to have done enough homework to know the answers. President Kennedy’s brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, who won quick confirmation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as director of the newly-created government agency, held a press conference on March 6 which shed little light on the future activities of the Peace Corps. His answers, to questions either began or ended with such phrases as, “I’d just like to make one comment, and it is that all of the things here are in the tentative planning stage,” or, “Yes, we plan to do that, but like everything else in the Peace Corps, it’s flexible.”