It was during this period, in 1901, that Sands received the Cross of the Legion of Honor of France and was made a chevalier of that order for protecting French missionaries during an uprising on the island of Jeju.

He reentered the U.S. diplomatic service where he functioned as an "emergency man" or "trouble shooter"; his assignments at that time were usually as special envoy to capital cities in which there was a perceived crisis.

He was sent to Panama in this capacity in 1904 as first secretary of legation under Charles E. Magoon, in order to ease frictions and allay fears that had arisen from the American involvement in the revolt against Columbia and from Theodore Roosevelt's seizure of the canal zone.

[4] In Our Jungle Diplomacy, Sands pointed out that United States policy in South America was creating a perception among Latin Americans that the U.S. was intending to absorb their continent.

The book moves from this premise…to the somewhat startling conclusion that we are responsible for Japanese imperialism…A similar lack of proportion and balance would seem to characterize the conclusion…that we are still the Big Bad Wolf of the Western Hemisphere."

But, continued Yost, when the author and his collaborator [Joseph M Lalley] comment on "the burning issues of the moment…the result is not impressive, since their political conclusions are based on data the collection of which apparently ceased about the year 1910."

[1] In 1911, Sands represented James Speyer & Co. of New York in Ecuador for the projected construction of the Guayaquil waterworks as a safeguard against the last west stronghold of yellow fever and bubonic plague.