Chapter 1
by John Gavin Nolan
From the diary Mr. Smith kept, and from a few of the letters his sister sent to family and to friends, it is clear that until they returned to Rome in June the Smiths did little except work. Walter exhausted himself trying to put some order into the relief administration in Constantinople, and for the same purpose he spent two weeks in the Caucasus, while Helen, his secretary and confidant, devoted her spare time to raising funds for the “Benoit XV” orphanage the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Angelo Maria Dolci, had opened during the war. Father Calavassy, who had returned to Constantinople, gave them every minute he could spare. His sisters and brother became their “outside friends,” as distinct from their “inside friends,” the American Protestants, whom the Smiths found “Christians and often full of charity and zeal” but so “narrow” and “ignorant of things Catholic” that the Philadelphia Catholics were inclined at times to become impatient.25
The Protestants, however, at least were Americans, a point in their favor, according to Helen, for the Catholic missionaries were mostly French, “for whom nobody has a good word.”26 There would be a “splendid field in the Near East,” where “there are no Catholic American Missions,” for American priests and religious as well as lay people “to do what American Protestants are doing,” Helen noted, and added that on this subject “Walter will have a very interesting report to give on his return” to Rome.27