The digestive trouble has brought other ills in its train; and I am assured that they will yield to freedom from responsibility and complete rest for a time in a dry, warm climate and that they are not likely to yield to anything else.
I see nothing else to do then but to bow to the inevitable and to ask you to be kind enough to relieve me and to accept my resignation to take effect as soon as I can go to Washington and make a somewhat extended report on the work here, which, I hope, will be of some use to the Department; and I ought to go as soon as possible--say, in September.

I cannot tell you how great my disappointment is that this request has become necessary.
If the world and its work were so organized that we could do what we should like to do, I should like a leave of absence till winter be broken and then to take up my duties here again till the war end.

But that, of course, is impracticable.

And it is now a better time to change Ambassadors than at any time since the war began.

My five years' service has had two main phases--the difficult period of our neutrality and the far easier period since we came into the war.