File No. 23286/1.

President Taft to the President of France.

Is there any manner in which, through the National Red Cross or otherwise, appropriate expression could be made of the sympathetic distress with which the people and Government of the United States learn of the reported calamities which floods are causing your beautiful and historic capital, as well as in the Provinces of France? Meanwhile I offer you the sincerest sympathy and the most ardent wishes that the cause of these disasters may soon abate.

Wm. H. Taft.