Address to Peace Corps Staff

"...all of us in this room, as well as the people abroad, are a part of one of the most exciting and successful operations that has been undertaken by our Government, at least in the last decade."
Washington, D.C. • February 10, 1964

For 30 minutes the Director addressed 450 members of PC/W Staff and for an additional 10 minutes answered questions from the group. The meeting followed by one week the Director’s appointment as Special Assistant to the President to direct the President’s Program against Poverty. The address also followed by a little more than a week the Director’s return from a month long tour of Peace Corps Projects in Asia. The following is the text of the Director’s remarks:

Good morning everybody. I’m sorry to cut short the interesting talk that Warren Wiggins was giving you, but I wanted to have a chance to talk with you for a little while and perhaps to answer questions if you have some you would like to shoot at me.

Because of the abrupt news which struck me as unexpectedly as it perhaps did you--that I was going to try to take on the job as Special Assistant to the President, to work on the Poverty Program--one of the things I am most interested in making clear is the fact that I am still very much in love with the Peace Corps, and that I do not want anything on the Poverty Program to interrupt my allegiance to or interest in the Peace Corps both here in Washington and around the world.

I have always felt that way about the Peace Corps, but right now I am especially captivated by it. At the time the poverty job was presented to me, I had just returned from a trip around the world visiting Peace Corps Volunteers. I wish that all of you--or at least some of you--could have an experience like the one I had on this trip. It’s the 12th trip like this that I have taken visiting Peace Corps Volunteers in various countries. My wife doesn’t like that too much, because we computed that out of the three years with the Peace Corps I have spent one year away from home--not just on trips around the world, but also in the United States--and that isn’t too good for your home life. But the results of this particular trip were to me very inspiring and reassuring. I think they convinced me all over again--if I needed to be convinced-- that all of us in this room, as well as the people abroad, are a part of one of the most exciting and successful operations that has been undertaken by our Government, at least in the last decade.

I think I can say that today, with a great deal of assurance, because on this trip it was transparent to anyone--including a couple of journalists who were with me--that the Peace Corps was performing far beyond the expectations that anyone ever had.

OUTSTANDING STAFF

Let me give you an idea of what I mean: We were in six or eight countries, and in those countries on the staff we had four Ph.D.s, about four or five L.L.B.s, an M.D., two or three people
 with a MA degree, and about six ex-Peace Corps Volunteers already employed. The staff members themselves had the personality, the dedication, the sense of humor, the capacity and the intelligence to lead a diverse group of PCVs working in various types of activities in those countries. Almost without exception they spoke the language of the country in which they were working. They had been all over those countries; they knew as much about them as the people who had lived there for many, many years and more about them than many citizens of the foreign countries. They were the kind of people you would be proud to know; they were exciting, interesting human beings. In every country the American Ambassador, one after the other would sometime during the course of my visit there, take me aside and say, “Shriver, I want to tell you how deeply grateful we are on the Embassy staff for the quality of Peace-Corps personnel you have sent to this country.”

Out of the 45 or 46 countries where we have worked during the last three years, I don’t think we have had a half dozen cases of regret expressed by our own foreign service officers about the quality of the staff people who have gone abroad for the Peace Corps. You haven’t perhaps heard me talk very much about the importance of the staff overseas. Perhaps you haven’t heard anybody talk very much about it. But let me assure all of you that the Peace Corps would not be a success abroad if it were not for the quality of the staff which is in charge of our operation abroad.

We hear a great deal of talk--and justifiable talk, and praise for the Peace Corps Volunteers; and they are obviously an essential ingredient of our success. But it is also true that the staff abroad is an essential ingredient of our success. And they have made a tremendous impression everywhere they have gone. This made me feel very good, not only that the people we have there now on the job are excellent representatives of the United States Government and of the Peace Corps, but that we continue to get dedicated and able Americans volunteering to do this work overseas. And it is exceedingly hard work. When we think that we are working hard here in Washington, I wish you could see how hard the Peace Corps staff has to work overseas. Not only the men but their wives. It’s a 24 hour-a-day job. It’s almost like being a family doctor. The phone rings night and
 day. The responsibilities exist night and day. The work goes on night and day.

Charlie Houston, our Peace Corps Representative in India, takes three weeks to make one tour of half of the Volunteers in his country. He is on the road in a jeep all the time--not all the time--half the time, because the other half the time his Deputy, Brent Ashabranner, is on the road. Carlie Houston is a fello who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, magna cum laude from Columbia. He is a cardiologist, 50 years old, has five kids. He is a full professor, a full visiting professor in the all-India Research Hospital in New Delhi. That’s the level of person he is, the quality and background. Incidentally, it is, rather good for us that he happens to have been Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara’s personal physician, and also for William Saltonstall who went to Nigeria as a Peace Corps Rep. This man works night and day. He does a tremendous job. As I say, more people are coming along-men and women to fill these jobs. That was very inspiring to me.

OUTSTANDING VOLUNTEERS

In the same way, the Peace Corps Volunteers in these countries are doing outstanding work. I’ll never forget seeing a girl in Turkey named Betty Hanks, 22 years old, she is about 5'4", a little blond-haired girl in a town called Afyon-Lisesi-Afyon conducting an English class in the evening. An adult education course. In the class there were military people, both enlisted men and officers. There were the industrialists and businessmen of the town. There were younger people, there were women, and Betty was running this class. She had 75 people in this class. Twice a week it met in the evening. She taught all day long in addition. They were reciting poetry and learning poetry as a way of learning English. And the climax of the evening’s entertainment, you might say, or demonstration of the class, was this young girl, Betty Hanks, leading the Turkish group, singing the Civil Rights song, “We Shall Overcome”.

At the end of the song, evidently they had a few pamphlets about the Peace Corps., and this girl said, “Who’s got the propaganda? Where’s the propaganda?” And somebody handed out the Peace Corps leaflets and said, “Who wants the propaganda this week?” And she passed the propaganda on to the next person who wanted it.

Somebody sitting next to me said, “You know this meeting is worth about 30 or 50 press releases on the Civil Rights issue in the United States or on the way our Government works.” They said this because here was a bonafide American citizen talking about the pamphlets of the Peace Corps--as being propaganda. Everybody laughed about it; everybody read the literature and was very much interested in it. If we had tried surreptitiously to infiltrate information about the Peace Corps or tried to “sell” the Peace Corps it would not have been effective. But her very open and frank and honest way of just saying “Here is information about the Peace Corps” even deriding it as “propaganda”, labeling it as propaganda this disarmed any potential opposition, and revealed a guilelessness which won the affection of her students.

IN AFGHANISTAN The Peace Corps is the first agency of any foreign government to work in all parts of Afghanistan. Other countries, and representatives of ‘other countries, have been either restricted to the capital city, Kabul, of Afghanistan; or if they are allowed to go outside, they go outside on a special project for the duration of the project and then they have to come in and leave the country. The Peace Corps has been given complete freedom to go anywhere in Afghanistan. This is the first time any agency of any government has been given that freedom. That will give you an idea of the respect that the government has for our Volunteers.

One of the boys, Peter Fitzpatrick, was sent to a town where the tribal customs are so extreme that it is really quite dangerous for everybody in the town. That is because hillsmen from up in the Hindu Kush come into town on Thursday or Friday night and really shoot the place up, so to speak. It’s dangerous. Peter Fitzpatrick is locked in his compound every night at 6:00 o’clock by the local police as a protection measure. He was sleeping in a room that wasn’t more than three times the size of this podium that I’m standing on. It had one window up in the top of the wall and it looked like a dungeon and he had a little kitchen which was about twice the size of this podium. Those were his sleeping accommodations. He slept on the floor.

IN NEPAL

In Nepal--I saw Willi Unsoeld here as I came in, he could tell you more about it than I --but walking four or five days from one town to another by Peace Corps Volunteers or sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag is routine in that country. It’s so routine that when the Director and his group arrived in a town called Nepalgunj we came into the airport, which is just a grass strip, and landed there. We went over to what you might call the airport tower. It’s a room about the size of this rug up here, and there was nobody there. The Peace Corps Volunteers in the town there obviously had not received word that we were coming--communications in Nepal are not the best in the world--and so we just walked seven miles into town. (Laughter.) This is something that nobody even thinks twice about in Nepal, although the Director thought four of five times about it. (Great laughter.) But I’m proud to say that I actually got there and was pleased to find that I could walk seven miles across that particular plain.

But the Volunteers, as I say, they don’t think anything about it. Peter Fitzpatrick is not too happy being locked in his room every night at 6 o’clock, but he is out there--the first Western man, the first North American ever to live in that particular part of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a country where, at the beginning, they asked us to send nine Peace Corps Volunteers. And I was very reluctant to do that because it was quite expensive to get the training set up for nine people. It didn’t seem to be worthwhile, but we sent nine, and the government there told us if we were successful they might consider asking for more. Maybe a year later they asked for 30 more, and they seemed to be pleased with them, they asked for 30 more, so that by the time I got to Afghanistan, or the day after I left, there as a matter of fact, there were 65 Peace Corps Volunteers in Afghanistan. And the night before I left, the Government of Afghanistan gave me an official request for 220 additional Volunteers in that country. (Applause.)

Now, Afghanistan is a country that is right up against Soviet Russia. It’s a country which for thousands of years has been subjected to invasion from abroad going all the way back to Alexander, I think. So the Afghans don’t like foreigners. It’s got nothing particularly to do with Americans--they just don’t like people who come from outside because about 20 times in the last 2000 years they have been slaughtered by foreigners. It’s a tremendous compliment, I repeat, to the Peace Corps Volunteers and to the staff there, and to the whole operation, that Afghanistan has asked for such tremendous additional numbers of Peace Corps Volunteers, and has given them permission to work all over that country.

In Thailand, I just stopped there for a day and a half or two days on the way home - the biggest university in Southeast Asia called Chulalongkorn in Bangkok, Thailand, gave me an honorary degree, a Doctor of Political Science. They had given only one other honorary degree to one other American since that University was started. This man was a doctor named Ellis. He went out there, sent by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920’s, and started the Medical School at Chulalongkorn University. He worked there for 7 years and when he retired to come home, they gave him an honorary degree.

The Director of the Peace Corps was the second U.S. recipient an honorary degree from that institution. This degree requires approval by the Cabinet of Thailand as well as the faculty of the University. I think it is absolutely without precedent in Asia that any organization should be so honored after two years of work, which is actually how long we have had Volunteers in Thailand. As a matter of fact, the first Volunteers reached Thailand in January of 1962. And in January of 1964, the Director of the Peace Corps got an honorary degree there. That’s never happened before. It had been 30 or 35 years since the last American got a degree. We have had anywhere from a dozen to 20 men and women teaching on the faculty at Chulalongkorn University, as well as Volunteers working in other parts of Thailand.

When I got the degree, the Foreign Minister of Thailand; whose name is Thanat Khoman, got up and gave a speech in which he said things the Ambassador said that he had never heard anybody in the Government of Thailand say. Here’s what the Thai Foreign Minister said - these are his exact words:

“I wish to welcome Mr. Shriver on behalf of the World Affairs Council which has been privileged to hear some of the experiences of this great idea conceived by the late President John F. Kennedy, who; in his life, was given to make his country and the world at large a safe place to live in Although his life has been taken away, his memory has remained. He represents a personality animated by ideas and ideals and by the strength of his conviction that the world has to live in freedom, has to live with hope as a decent place for all of us.”

“Even though I do not have much in connection with the Peace Corps, I have been privileged to have conversations with Mr. Shriver when he came here to approach the government about sending Peace Corps members here. I had the honor and pleasure of telling him that the idea was appealing and attractive. I spoke on my own behalf as an individual, as a person, but I had the conviction then that the Thai government also was pleased with the idea. And at the present time, there are many members of the Peace Corps here amongst us. There will be more.”

“They come here with the refreshing lightness of youth. With the strength of their convictions and ideas they come here to know our people and to live with our people, and in many places to work with’ our people. In our minds they, represent ambassadors of goodwill'-from the United States, that great country that has known the strength of ideas and problems. They (the Volunteers) came here as ambassadors of goodwill, without diplomatic privileges and immunity, but I must say that they have had, and still have, arid will have’ the privilege of having a place in the hearts of many Thai people. And I think, I’m sure, as a matter of fact, that the members of the Peace Corps will appreciate this even more than the diplomatic privilege or immunity.”

“We have been struck and inspired by this idea of youth coming to meet with youth, which is in accordance with our belief here in Thailand that peace, goodwill and understanding can prevail and remain in this world only if they start from the grass roots. You, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Peace Corps, you come from the grass roots. You come to work with the grass roots of our country. That is the basis of future progress in the world so much divided today.”

“I do not have to wish you success because I know you have already achieved success. Many successes will come to you as things go on. As you come here inspired by your own beliefs and inspired by the great conviction that man can live, must live with man.” “It is indeed striking that this important idea, the most powerful idea in recent times, of a Peace Corps, of youth mingling, living, working with youth, should come from this mightiest nation on earth, the United States. Many of us who did not know about, the United States thought of this great nation as a wealthy nation, a powerful nation, endowed’, with great material strength and many powerful weapons. But how many of us know that in the United States ideas and ideals are also powerful? This is the secret of your greatness, of your might, which is not imposing or crushing people, but is filled with the hope of future „goodwill and understanding. I hope this idea will thrive and all of you, my friends, will continue. I wish Mr. Shriver success, and continued success to all of you.”

This was the Foreign Minister of Thailand speaking in front of the whole Cabinet which was sitting on the stage there.-. And I couldn’t help but think right then that it was just about 2 and 1/2 years ago that I first went to Thailand on behalf of the Peace Corps,-and let me tell you there was great skepticism in Thailand then as there was in other countries. Great skepticism about the Peace Corps then. Today, just two years later, the Foreign Minister was able to stand up and say the words I’ve just quoted in front of a huge audience and in front of the leadership of that country.

I had the honor to visit with the King of Thailand; I was assigned 20 minutes on his schedule. Behind me waiting was Carlos Romulo, the former Ambassador to the U. S. from the Philippines and President of the University of the Philippines. There was a general there who was the Aide to the King. I went in to see the King and with me was the Minister of Economic Development of Thailand, a man named Pote Sarasin, who has been the head of SEATO for a number of years. I was sitting there, the King was on a sofa and Sarasin was sitting next to me. Finally after an hour and 10 minutes this general, the aide-de-camp, came in for the third time and said, in effect, “Your Majesty, you’ve got to stop this conversation. General Romulos has been waiting for three-fourths of an hour,” and I left.

Frankly, I didn’t say very much. The King talked most of the time and I think you would be as overwhelmed as I was by the mission which the King of Thailand assigned to the Peace Corps in Thailand. He said, “Mr. Shriver, not only in terms of foreign aid but in terms of many operations of your Government, there have been mistakes made in Thailand. The Peace Corps has come with a totally new approach, and it is most acceptable to my people and you have the ‘job of rectifying, remedying the mistakes
 of the U.S. for the last 15 years.”

Now he didn’t say this once; he said it half a dozen times, in half a dozen different ways. So much so that at one point I said, “Your Majesty, it’s a pretty large job that you’re
 assigning to 250 Peace Corps Volunteers in Thailand.” He said, “Not at all.” He said, “Numbers are not what count.” He said, “People all over Thailand know about the Peace Corps because of the way that you have done things. Not the number of people you have sent here. You have shown us a new side of the United States of America.”

It is an extraordinary thing to realize that the King of Thailand said these things--a constitutional monarch but one of the few remaining monarchs in the world with real power. It’s an extraordinary thing for him to say. Especially when I can remember that as short a time as 20 months ago the King of Thailand was reputed not to be overly enthusiastic about the Peace Corps. —But today he is. There is no question about that. And Thailand was another one of the countries where, when we finished our little tour of the country and had a press conference upon departure, the press conference was held in the building of the Government of Thailand. Not in the U.S. Embassy, or the USIA office. In fact, when we had the press conference in India, upon our short visit there, it was held in the Ministry of Economic Development of India, and the head of the USIA in New Delhi told me it was the first time any American official had ever held a press conference at the request of the Indian Government in a building belonging to the Indian Government.

These things are little tiny things but they are very significant. Especially in the East where the way you do things and where they are done have perhaps: more significance than they do -let’s say here in the United States. The fact that the Peace Corps Director has a press conference within the physical confines, within the buildings, of a foreign country is significant in India. Significant in Thailand and significant in Malaya and all of the other places where it has occurred. 


Do many of you remember Athos Ravelle who worked with us here in Washington and his wife who worked in the Talent Scouts, a Japanese-American girl from Hawaii named Yuki Mai? Well, they are now in Thailand. As you probably know, he is the Deputy Director there, and he and his wife gave us a party. Before the party our group has spent five days - four days in Nepal, and the last two or the last four - I can’t remember which it was of the days we were in Nepal - we never got a bath. I rode about eight miles in the back of a jeep down a dusty road. By the time I got off, Paul Conklin, our photographer took a picture. I haven’t seen the picture, but I must have been an inch thick with dust all over me - looked like a sandman and we weren’t able to get that off for several days so that by the time we actually arrived in Thailand I stepped into a shower turned on the water and with no soap the water just ran down black on the bottom of the tub.

So we had been having a rather interesting time in Nepal leading this kind of life. I took that shower and went out to a party that Athos Ravelle had arranged for us and for 50 or 60 Peace Corps Volunteers who had been brought into Thailand for the evening. They were living in a Thai house - it wasn’t a particularly lavish one, but a nice one. It had gardens around it, with coconut palms and other tropical vegetation like that. We got out of the car, and there standing in the front door was Yuki Miki in her Japanese kimono with the obi on the back, the white shoes and the sandals and everyone else’s shoes were lying on the front porch. Everybody was taking off their shoes. I got mine off.

Yuki gave me two great big kisses - which made me feel good, and we went through the house and out into the lawn, and there was a fabulous scene. They had their place fixed up with those things you stick in the ground which have a flare on the top with the flame coming out, and along the edge of the garden they had little Votive lamps like you see in church with the candles in them. They were all around the place, and 70 Volunteers out there. It looked like Hollywood. /Laughter/ I realize I’m getting a little older but the girls really looked terrific. /Great Laughter/

HAPPINESS IN THE PEACE CORPS

And these guys were all tremendous guys - I had to look up to see-them practically, and they were all really so happy, and I think that is one thing about the Peace Corps nobody talks about very much, but to me it is very important. People are happy in the Peace Corps. I don’t mean everybody is - I know that. /Laughter/ 


But the overall impression you get is one of sort of gaiety, a sort of you know - good-naturedness. You know, one fellow was there, he’s been drinking a bit too much and you know he comes up to me, we have a terrific talk and he insults me three or four times. /Great laughter/ It’s just like any other party you go to. /More laughter/

But Yuki Miki had cooked the whole thing herself, the most terrific food you ever saw. They had these long sticks, bamboo sticks with chicken in the middle, open and spread it apart and somehow put the chicken in there. Cooked on a skewer. They had something like shishkabob, rice. She had two or three kinds of cake - spice cake and a chocolate cake that she’d cooked - some beer and the rest of it. It was just the most fabulous setting you have ever seen in your life, and we sat there and talked until 1 o’clock in the morning. This whole group sitting there and talking. One of the girls I found out - needless to say I found out she is a very good-looking girl, sort of blond and very attractive-that she had won only two Olympic Medals in swimming. A Peace CorpsVolunteer – I don’t even know what her name was--but there are people in the Peace Corps with talent like that.

There were three or four people there who had been teaching for two years at Kuala Lumpur and decided to stay on and continue teaching. I think they had graduate degrees, I can’t remember for sure. That famous fellow, Pitts, was there. He stayed on in some other capacity, not with the Peace Corps in Thailand. He’s the guy who won that boxing - had that big fight out there. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s still there. The whole thing was almost like a fairyland, and was a terrific contract to Nepal where the going was really tough.

NEPAL: TOUGH, BUT BEAUTIFUL

However, I don’t want to leave Nepal on that note; because it is such a beautiful country. It’s absolutely incredible to see those mountains. We have some people in a place called Pokhara. If any of you are interested in making some money, I advise you to buy some acreage in Pokhara, because by the year 2000 it’s destined to be one of the great resorts of the world.

There’s a beautiful lake there: the temperature gets up to about 70 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime, and goes damn to about 40 at night. The sleeping is perfect. The Annapurna range is up behind you. There are four peaks right next to each other. I think they are all over 26,000 feet, right next to each other. And right in front of them there is a dramatic mountain: it’s fantastic, it’s magnificent looking, sharp. It goes up like the Matterhorn in the Alps. And if you try to ask what the name of that mountain is--you know--they call it the “Fishtail”, but nobody pays much attention to it: because it’s only 24,000 feet high--higher than any mountain in the Western hemisphere but routine for Nepal. Our kids - the Peace Corps people over there - walk a part of the way up this mountain. They get up to 19,000 feet, and the weather is such that there isn’t even snow at 19,000 feet on the Fishtail. Nineteen thousand (19,000) feet--you
 know, that’s just considered a nice hike. It takes about a week or 10 days. That’s higher than anything in the Alps. That’s the kind of background you have, and tremendous gorges with these mountain streams coming down.

And there at the airport was another one of those beautiful places--the Annapurna Hotel and Restaurant: run by Tibetans. And there were the Tibetan prayer flags flying in the breeze. They write prayers on them. Then they put them up in the breeze. And when the wind blows it makes the flags wave, which is the equivalent of a prayer being said.

Nepal is a fantastic country--at least it was to me. There is a wonderful Buddhist temple at the top of the hill overlooking Kathmandu. When you go up there in the evening and look down, the whole thing: looks like a Hollywood backdrop. Every little part of it is so well tended; houses sit on the hills, and they have that terrace planting and little people are going about doing things. It looks just like a movie backdrop, but it is one of the most fascinating and charming countries in the world.

To give you an idea on how difficult the work is for the Volunteers, we have some of them stationed at an agricultural training experimental station. They cleared a part of the jungle and had planted about 60 acres. I asked them why they were not able to make progress more rapidly, and they said: “Mr. Shriver, here is an indication: every tree in this jungle is numbered. And we have a folio with every tree numbered in it, and if we want to cut down a tree in order to clear more land for agricultural purposes, we have to write a letter to Kathmandu requesting permission to cut down that tree by number. 
It takes one month for the letter to get from here to Kathmandu; it takes about two months for it to be processed, and takes one month for the letter to come back. So in order to cut down one tree in this jungle - which is 100 miles long and eight miles wide - it takes...you four months to get permission from Washington so to speak.” /Laughter/

I think that this trip may be one of the greatest-trips I have ever taken. I have now visited about 40 of the 46 countries in which we are working. This trip lasted about a month. I went about 27,000 miles, and I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet--I think it was six or eight heads of state in 36 hours.

In the Holy Land, Palestine and Jordan, I met the King of Jordan; the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion; the current Prime Minister of Israel, Eshkol; and the Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban; and the Pope-all within 36 hours. In one day--later on in the trip--I had a meeting with President Ayub Khan of Pakistan at 9:30 in the morning, and a meeting with the President of India, Radhakrishnan, at 4:30 in the afternoon.

THE PEACE CORPS TODAY

But leaving those particular experiences aside, I came back to Washington and to the Peace Corps more enthusiastic than I have ever been about the validity of the Peace Corps work, the effectiveness of it abroad, the value of it to our country and the success of it in terms of the Corps having done exactly what we have said it would do. I wanted to tell you this because when an operation has been going on for say, three years, it is possible for some of us back here to lose some of our steam; to feel that everything has been done--that now we can get it all in a routine, and there’s nothing very much new; that we can all settle down and relax; that what we are doing is not as important now as before.

I can tell you--with the greatest of sincerity--that the Peace Corps could be more important today than when it was started. Much more important. The work you are doing now and will do this year in bringing many additional Volunteers to the Peace Corps and sending them overseas is more important than any work we did in the first year of the Peace Corps. The opportunities for the Peace Corps are immensely greater today than they were two years ago. Immensely greater. The impact of the Peace Corps abroad is far beyond anything we ever dreamed it would be. But it’s just beginning. I honestly believe that the time has come now when a big quantum leap in terms of quality--and even in quantity--can be made by the Peace Corps in nearly every country where we’re working.

And so I repeat to you the message I sent to the Peace Corps Reps when I was given the Poverty assignment. I said in that message that I would continue as the Director of the Peace Corps, and that I was sending that message to all the staff and Volunteers abroad to assure them that this new appointment “will in no way diminish my responsibility for, interest in, and concern for all aspects of our Peace Corps program.”

Frankly, I never was as proud or as happy to be a member of any organization as lam to be a member of the Peace Corps. And I am more proud, more pleased and more happy today than the day we started. That’s the only message I had really to give to you-all the rest of it has just been a preamble. Thank you very much.
 /Sustained applause/

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The question-and-answer period following the Director’s remarks included these, in substance:

Question: Will you be able to do both jobs - Peace Corps and Poverty?

Shriver: If it’s possible at all, it will work out in the next few months. We might find out that it is not possible. If the Peace Corps staff continues to do the fine job it is doing, then doing both jobs might be possible. It also depends on how many really fine people we can bring into the Poverty program. If it is not possible for me to do both jobs, maybe I’ll have to find someone to run the Poverty program. /Sustained applause/

Question: Will Bill Moyers return from the White House to the Peace Corps?”

Shriver: President Johnson needs him very much, and probably will need him throughout the summer. I have utmost respect for Bill. I expect him for his dedication and his ability, and I assure you that he continues to be very much interested in the work of the Peace Corps. This week - Thursday and Friday - he will be sharing recruiting assignments with me by giving speeches in the Midwest. President Johnson has assured us that he will grant as much of Moyer’s time as possible.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
RSSPCportrait
Sargent Shriver
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