Mr. Draper to Mr. Hay.
Rome, Italy , December 9, 1899 .
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt this morning of a cipher telegram from you reading as follows when deciphered:
Your confidential dated yesterday received. Ellis Island bureau will be discontinued January 1, for administrative reasons. This Government thinks it not expedient to reconsider its action.
Later I communicated the purport of this instruction to the minister for foreign affairs, who expressed great regret, but said that he would instruct Baron Fava to ask if there were not some means agreeable to our Government in which the inconveniences to the Italian emigrants which their bureau was designed to prevent could be mitigated or avoided. I accordingly have sent you a telegram in cipher to that effect, and it is confirmed on this page of this dispatch. I sincerely hope that some arrangement satisfactory to both Governments may be arrived at.
I am, etc.,