I congratulate you with all my heart on his transference.
I long, as you do, for an opportunity to do constructive work all along the line in our foreign relations, particularly with Great Britain and the Latin-American states, but surely, my dear fellow, you are deceiving yourself in supposing that constructive work is not now actually going on, and going on at your hands quite as much as at ours.

The change of attitude and the growing ability to understand what we are thinking about and purposing on the part of the official circle in London is directly attributable to what you have been doing, and I feel more and more grateful every day that you are our spokesman and interpreter there.

This is the only possible constructive work in foreign affairs, aside from definite acts of policy.

So far as the policy is concerned, you may be sure I will strive to the utmost to obtain both a repeal of the discrimination in the matter of tolls and a renewal of the arbitration treaties, and I am not without hope that I can accomplish both at this session.

Indeed this is the session in which these things must be done if they are to be done at all.
Back of the smile which came to my face when you spoke of the impenetrable silence of the State Department toward its foreign representatives lay thoughts of very serious concern.