File No. 841.731/920
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 3.]
Dear Mr. Lansing: Following your instructions conveyed in your telegram No. 1954, of August 6, I have submitted to the Foreign Office all the telegrams that have come from you that bear a date later than July 1. Some of them are so old (there is one that goes back to August 1914) that I was afraid to put them in lest no attention should be paid to any that I sent in. I have been told informally that to send in these old telegrams would require the work of two men a whole year, consequently of four men for six months, or eight men for three months, or twenty-four men for a month, and they simply haven’t the men. I write you this in a personal note hoping that you will agree with me that this is a better policy than to dump all those older telegrams on the Foreign Office, and thereby run a grave risk of failing to have attention paid to any of them. Besides, the number of these old ones is not very great.
I confess I am somewhat doubtful whether we shall ever hear from those that I sent in.
Very sincerely yours,