WALSH, EDMUND ALOYSIUS

Educator and author; b. South Boston, Massachusetts, Oct. 10, 1885; d. Washington, D.C., Oct. 31, 1956. Walsh was the son of John Francis and Catherine J. (Noonan) Walsh. After entering the Jesuit novitiate at Frederick, Maryland, in 1902, he taught English at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., from 1909 to 1911. He went abroad for graduate work in Dublin and London and theological studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, before being ordained by Cardinal James Gibbons at Woodstock College, Maryland, in 1916. He became dean of Georgetown University and was given additional appointments in 1918 as assistant educational director of the Jesuits' New England colleges and member of the coordinating board of the Students' Army Training Corps. He founded the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1919 and served as its first director and regent.

Walsh, having been appointed in 1922 as director of the Papal Relief Mission in Russia, recovered from Moscow the relics of St. Andrew Bobola and had them transferred to Rome. This assignment, and his selection as president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association in 1927, inaugurated a series of international experiences that made him an authority on foreign affairs. He published his first book on Russia, The Fall of the Russian Empire, in 1928, and this was followed by The Last Stand (1931), Ships and National Safety (1934), Total Power (1948), and Total Empire (1951).

In 1929 Walsh was sent as Vatican representative to Mexico where he served with Dwight Morrow and Miguel Cruchaga on a commission that sought to reconcile the Mexican government with the Church. Two years later he was dispatched as Vatican legate to Iraq where he negotiated for the establishment of Baghdad College. Following service as visiting lecturer (1935, 1939) at the Academy of International Law, The Hague, and acting president (1937) of Georgetown University, Walsh became lecturer and consultant for the U.S. Department of War in 1942. After World War II, he was a civilian consultant to the U.S. chief of counsel at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. In 1947–48 he went to Japan as visitor general in order to reorganize the Society of Jesus there. In 1949 he was named to presidential commissions on universal military training and on religious needs in the Armed Forces. That same year he founded the Institute of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown. Walsh was honored when the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University was renamed for him on Oct. 13, 1958. He also received two honorary doctorates and was made a knight of the Spanish Order of Isabella La Católica.

[l. j. gallagher]