It was President Harding, with Charles Hughes as his Foreign Secretary,
who summoned the Conference on Naval Disarmament, and carried it
through with triumphant success, due not a little to the hearty
co-operation of the British Government through its representative, Lord
Balfour. That limitation of naval armaments was really the first step
towards world peace, though many steps must follow before peace is
secure. It did at least one enormous thing in history. It stopped the
possibility of a competition in naval strength between Great Britain
and the United States which, if it had happened, would not only have
been a crushing burden to the taxpayers but would have led inevitably
to suspicion and hostility between our two nations. The agreement of
Japan was also a check to a rivalry in naval power which would have
produced explosive forces and passions. The agreement did not stop the
possibility of naval warfare, but it killed its inevitability.
The conclusion of that conference re-inspired the idealists. It
encouraged them to further efforts to stimulate public opinion. Mr.
Charles Hughes suggested an economic conference in Europe which
resulted eighteen months later in the acceptance of the Dawes Report.
The women’s clubs, the peace associations, many of the leaders of
American thought, became more and more distressed at the state of
things in Europe, more and more convinced that only by American
participation, at least in moral and economic spheres, could Europe
solve its problems on lines of reasonable compromise.