Editing Charles Evans Hughes (section)

==Secretary of State==
{{Further|Presidency of Warren G. Harding|Presidency of Calvin Coolidge}}
[[File:Charles Evans Hughes residence.jpg|thumb|Hughes's residence in 1921]]

Shortly after Harding's victory in the 1920 election, Hughes accepted the position of [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]].<ref name="Simon 2012 132"/> After the death of Chief Justice White in May 1921, Hughes was mentioned as a potential successor. Hughes told Harding he was uninterested in leaving the State Department, and Harding instead appointed former President Taft as the Chief Justice.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=151–152}}</ref>

Harding granted Hughes a great deal of discretion in his leadership of the State Department and US foreign policy.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=150–1511}}</ref> Harding and Hughes frequently communicated, Hughes worked within some broad outlines, and the president remained well-informed.  However, the President rarely overrode any of Hughes's decisions, with the big and obvious exception of the League of Nations.{{sfn|Trani|Wilson|pp=109–110}}

After taking office, President Harding hardened his stance on the League of Nations to deciding the US would not join even a scaled-down version.{{sfn|Trani|Wilson|pp=142–145}} Another view is that Harding favored joining with reservations when he assumed office on March 4, 1921, but senators staunchly opposed (the "[[Irreconcilables]]"), per [[Ronald E. Powaski]]'s 1991 book, "threatened to wreck the new administration."<ref name="Toward an Entangling Alliance, Powaski, 1991">[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZDAoVZqHwocC&dq=%22in+the+Senate+threatened+to+wreck+the+new+administration+if+it+attempted+to+revive+the+treaty+and+the+League%22&pg=PA27 Toward an Entangling Alliance: American Isolationism, Internationalism, and Europe, 1901-1950] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211108184141/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZDAoVZqHwocC&pg=PA27&dq=%22in+the+Senate+threatened+to+wreck+the+new+administration+if+it+attempted+to+revive+the+treaty+and+the+League%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0n_LtvOHgAhUEP6wKHcCoDE8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22in%20the%20Senate%20threatened%20to%20wreck%20the%20new%20administration%20if%20it%20attempted%20to%20revive%20the%20treaty%20and%20the%20League%22&f=false |date=November 8, 2021 }}, Ronald E. Powaski, Greenwood Press, 1991.</ref>

Hughes favored membership in the League. Early in his tenure as Secretary of State, he asked the Senate to vote on the Treaty of Versailles,<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=150–151}}</ref> but he yielded to either Harding's changing views and/or the political reality within the Senate. Instead, he convinced Harding of the necessity of a separate treaty with Germany, resulting in the signing and eventual ratification of the [[U.S.–German Peace Treaty (1921)|U.S.–German Peace Treaty]].<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=152–153}}</ref> Hughes also favored US entrance into the [[Permanent Court of International Justice]] but was unable to convince the Senate to provide support.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=164–165}}</ref>

===Washington Naval Treaty===
Hughes's major initiative in office was preventing an [[arms race]] among the three great naval powers of Britain, [[Empire of Japan|Japan]], and the United States. After Senator [[William Borah]] led passage of a resolution calling on the Harding administration to negotiate an arms reduction treaty with Japan and Britain, Hughes convinced those countries as well as Italy and France to attend a naval conference in Washington. Hughes selected an American delegation consisting of himself, former Secretary of State [[Elihu Root]], Republican Senator [[Henry Cabot Lodge]], and Democratic Senator [[Oscar Underwood]]. Hughes hoped that the selection of Underwood would ensure bipartisan support for any treaty arising from the conference.

Prior to the conference, Hughes had carefully considered possible treaty terms since each side would seek terms that would provide its respective navy with subtle advantages. He decided to propose an arms reduction formula based on the immediate halting of all naval construction, with future construction limits based on the ship tonnage of each country. The formula would be based on the ship tonnage ratio of 1920, which stood at roughly 5:5:3 for the United States, Britain, and Japan, respectively. Knowing that US and foreign naval leaders would resist his proposal, he anxiously guarded it from the press, but he won the support of Root, Lodge, and Underwood.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=154–156}}</ref>

The [[Washington Naval Conference]] opened in November 1921, attended by five national delegations, and in the gallery by hundreds of reporters and dignitaries such as Chief Justice Taft and [[William Jennings Bryan]]. On the first day of the conference, Hughes unveiled his proposal to limit naval armaments. Hughes's ambitious proposal to scrap all US [[capital ship]]s under construction stunned the delegates, as did his proposals for the Japanese and British Navies.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=156–158}}</ref> The British delegation, led by [[Arthur Balfour]], supported the proposal, but the Japanese delegation, under the leadership of [[Katō Tomosaburō]], asked for several modifications. Katō asked for the ratio to be adjusted to 10:10:7 and refused to destroy the ''[[Japanese battleship Mutsu|Mutsu]]'', a [[dreadnought]] that many Japanese saw as a symbol of national pride. Katō eventually relented on the naval ratios, but Hughes acquiesced to the retention of the ''Mutsu'', leading to protests from British leaders. Hughes clinched an agreement after convincing Balfour to agree to limit the size of the [[Admiral-class battlecruiser]]s despite objections from the British Navy. Hughes also won agreement on the [[Four-Power Treaty]], which called for a peaceful resolution of territorial claims in the [[Pacific Ocean]], as well as the [[Nine-Power Treaty]], which guaranteed the territorial integrity of [[China]]. News of the success of the conference was warmly received around the world. [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] later wrote that the conference "brought to the world the first important voluntary agreement for limitation and reduction of armament."<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=159–161}}</ref>[[File:Hughes party for Brazil LCCN2014715067.jpg|thumb|Hughes (fourth from right) leads a delegation to Brazil with [[Carl Theodore Vogelgesang]] in 1922]]

===Other issues===
{{see also|Banana Wars}}
In the [[aftermath of World War I]], the German economy struggled from the strain of postwar rebuilding and war reparations owed to the Entente, and the Entente powers in turn owed large war debts to the United States. Though many economists favored cancellation of all European war debts, French leaders were unwilling to cancel the reparations, and Congress refused to consider forgiving the war debts. Hughes helped organize the creation of an international committee of economists to study the possibility of lowering Germany's reparations, and Hughes selected [[Charles G. Dawes]] to lead that committee. The resulting [[Dawes Plan]], which provided for annual payments by Germany, was accepted at a 1924 conference held in London.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=163–164}}</ref>
[[File:1924 C Evans Hughes.jpg|thumb|[[Autochrome Lumière|Autochrome]] portrait by Georges Chevalier, 1924]]
Hughes favored a closer relationship with the [[United Kingdom]], and sought to coordinate US foreign policy with Great Britain concerning matters in Europe and Asia.<ref>Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey</ref> Hughes sought better relations with the countries of [[Latin America]], and he favored removing US troops when he believed that doing so was practicable. He formulated plans for the withdrawal of US soldiers from the [[Dominican Republic]] and [[Nicaragua]] but decided that instability in [[Haiti]] required the continued presence of US soldiers. He also settled a border dispute between [[Panama]] and [[Costa Rica]] by threatening to send soldiers into Panama.<ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Simon|2012|pp=162–163}}</ref>

Hughes was the keynote speaker at the 1919 [[National Conference on Lynching]].