File No. 894.001 M98/9.

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador of Japan .

Excellency: I have had the honor to receive with great regret your note of the 30th instant by which you officially communicate to me the sad intelligence of the demise of His Majesty the late Emperor Mutsuhito at 12:45 o’clock in the morning of July 30 (Japanese time).

I did not fail to bring this melancholy news at once to the knowledge of the President who, greatly shocked by the death of this beneficient and distinguished ruler for whom he entertained the highest esteem and regard, has conveyed directly by telegraph to the new Emperor and the Empress Dowager his own sincere condolence and those of the Government and people of the United States under their present affliction.

I have in like manner offered to his excellency Viscount Uchida the expression of my personal sympathy and sorrow in the great loss which has been sustained by the Japanese nation.

Accept [etc.]

P. C. Knox.