What Did Those Opinion Makers Think Of The Peace Corps?

I have had a few emails asking about my comment yesterday when I wrote, “By hiring these journalists and novelists, for short term assignments, they then became advocates, fans, constituents, and supporters of the Peace Corps as Shriver told Charlie, “Get the opinion makers on your side!” 

What did those ‘opinion makers’  think and say about the Peace Corps?

Here a few comments about the beginnings of the agency that I pulled from old files I have on the first year of the Peace Corps.

“As a contribution to the solution of the world’s problems, it is still a tiny effort, but to dismiss it as just another form of public relations would be wide of the mark.” —London Times

“Here is a movement whose express purpose is to overcome the disastrous barriers that have hitherto segregated the affluent Western minority of the human race from the majority of their fellow men and women.”–Arnold Toynbee

“Just one year old this month, the Peace Corps is by far the bounciest and most promising baby yet spawned on the New Frontier.” –Radio newscaster Edward P. Morgan

 “I hope that when they come back, many of them will decide to make the Foreign Service their life work. If they do, we will have a better chance for survival.”–Max Lerner New York Post

“If the age we live in is remembered a thousand years from now, it will be remembered not only for its nuclear peril and threat to mass destruction, but for the revolutionary role its young people played.”–Christian Observer

“I think the Peace Corps is beginning to remove the doubts from the doubters’ minds. I have been impressed with the quality of the young men and women who are going into it. At first I thought it would advance work for a group of beatniks, but this is not so…I’ll back it all the way.”–Senator Barry Goldwater (Rep-Ariz.)

“The Peace Corps is proving itself an impressive, and inspiring, example of American idealism in action. Yet its benefits flow both ways. Countries are getting help that they need. At the same time, the United States is building a pool of experienced manpower which can be a valuable national resource.”–New York Herald Tribune

“Three successive Presidents have complained of the shortage of qualified governmental personnel. The Peace Corps could close that gap.” —Boston Globe

“I have had an opportunity to meet many Peace Corps Volunteers and find them remarkable. They are carrying out a project that will be a continuing benefit in the countries in which they serve and to the United States.”–Eleanor Roosevelt