Hughes then turned his attention to the department itself. In 1921,
the State Department had only 13 embassies and 35 legations abroad,
along with some 400 consulates varying in size and importance. Its
staff was divided into two branches, the Diplomatic and the Consular,
that performed independently of each other. The Washington office of
about 100 political appointees and civil service professionals had
been allowed to function informally with little attention to
specialized expertise or regional knowledge. It was clearly too small
and poorly resourced to handle the tough tasks ahead. The overseas
and Washington staffs were dispirited as well; after the war, work
loads had increased while low wages and poor working conditions went
unredressed. Hughes recognized the singular importance of management
as a function of departmental leadership and urged reform. The Rogers
Act of 1924 was a personal victory for Hughes. It fundamentally
restructured the Foreign Service by merging the Diplomatic and
Consular branches, creating a merit-based recruitment and promotion
system, and improving salaries and benefits.

The Treaty of Berlin

In assessing the numerous foreign policy problems in need of prompt
solution, Hughes believed that peace treaties with Germany, Hungary
and Austria were paramount. Two years and four months had elapsed
since the signing of the Armistice, yet, since the Senate had not
ratified the Treaty of Versailles, the United States remained
technically in a state of war with its former enemies. Without prior
consultation with the State Department, Congress passed a broad
measure, the Knox-Porter joint resolution of July 2, 1921,
unilaterally declaring an end to the war and reserving to the United
States "all rights, privileges, indemnities, reparations, or
advantages" as stipulated in the Versailles Treaty (to which the
United States was entitled as one of the five Allied and Associated
Powers). Although the United States was not a party to the Versailles
Treaty, Congress nevertheless wanted the country to benefit from its
provisions. However, the joint resolution was only a unilateral
declaration; it could not become a binding legal document until a
treaty was negotiated with the defeated nations and ratified by all
parties.

Hughes was furious at Congress for meddling in his domain and
significantly limiting his future options without informing him. He
also wished to preserve certain rights guaranteed in the Versailles
Treaty: a voice in the allocation of Germany's overseas possessions;
reimbursement for the costs of maintaining American troops stationed
in Germany; and especially the settlement of claims against Germany
by American citizens. But Congress had not helped. The Senate had
rejected the Versailles Treaty--meaning that Germany was technically
free to negotiate new terms with the United States--but the
Knox-Porter joint resolution mandated Hughes to secure a settlement
that would not diverge from the provisions laid out at Versailles.

Scrupulous and exact, Hughes therefore carefully crafted a document
that included almost all the parts of the Versailles Treaty, with the
significant exception of the League Covenant, and attached it to the
July 2 Senate resolution. This strategy obviated the need to start
from scratch in negotiations with the German government, and a
treaty--called the Treaty of Berlin--was approved by the Senate on
October 18, 1921. For those who believe that the United States was
not a party in any manner to the Versailles Treaty, the final text of
the Treaty of Berlin is proof to the contrary; it committed the
United States to uphold virtually all the terms of that treaty except
the League Covenant. Treaties with Germany's allies were quickly
concluded based on the same format.

Hughes' inventive strategy, however, drew fire from the League
faithful who chastised him for betraying their trust and abandoning
the Geneva-based institution. Like many internationally-minded
Americans, Hughes had supported the creation of a league of nations,
and had suggested several amendments to the 1919 draft of the
covenant to render it acceptable to the Senate. He had also advocated
America's entry into the Permanent Court of International Justice
(the World Court), which was authorized under Article 14 of the
League Covenant but created by a separate protocol. Hughes saw the
World Court as a major advance because it provided a permanent
mechanism for the settlement of disputes through adjudication--a
mechanism that was, in his view, fully consistent with America's
tradition of promoting the rule of law worldwide.

Meanwhile, several irate Senators accused him of demeaning the
authority of Congress. Suspicious of Hughes' resourcefulness, they
deliberately sought to limit his freedom of action by adding a
reservation to the Berlin Treaty forbidding American participation in
any meetings linked with the Versailles Treaty and the League of
Nations without explicit Congressional authorization. Hughes managed
to evade the restriction by sending "unofficial" observers to
international meetings, but this caused some confusion about their
precise role. Joseph Grew, Minister to Switzerland, described his
discomfort on being an unofficial observer at the Temporary Mixed
Commission sessions on traffic in arms held in Geneva in February
1924: "The Department's instructions are often open to various
interpretations: one may guess right, but one may also guess wrong,
and a wrong guess may be very serious indeed, particularly when
publicity is involved."

The Washington Naval Conference

With the United States a non-participant in the League of Nations,
Hughes sought, through the sponsorship of the 1921-22 Washington
Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, to establish a means for
the United States to initiate proposals to ensure international
security and peace, and thus to display world leadership. From
conception to conclusion, the much heralded multinational meeting was
a Hughesian production down to its most minute detail. It was also a
star-studded media event attended by world statesmen and covered
fully by the press, upon whom Hughes depended to publicize America's
willingness to be an active player on the international scene.
Originally conceived as a meeting on Far Eastern and Pacific issues
because of the pending renewal of the Anglo-Japanese military pact,
the agenda was expanded under public and Congressional pressure to
include the reduction of armaments. While remembered chiefly for
introducing the celebrated 5-5-3 ratios for capital ships, the
conference produced a network of agreements that provided a framework
for resolving political disputes in the Far East and Pacific.

The background to the Washington Naval Conference is quite complex.
There was, first and foremost, a widespread belief among the public,
both in the United States and abroad, that armaments races had
abetted the Great War. A costly naval race in the Pacific appeared
imminent in 1919-20, prompting Senator William Borah, chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to propose a disarmament
conference involving Japan, Britain and the United States to limit
their naval construction programs. President Harding had initially
favored a major naval buildup to gain a competitive edge before the
convening of such a conference, but Hughes understood that this would
further incite naval building and lead to a potentially disastrous
rivalry among the former Allies of the Great War. It was clear in any
case that Japan, having acquired former German territories in the
Pacific--the Marianas, the Caroline Islands and the Marshall
Islands--would gain the geopolitical advantage in Northeast Asia if a
major naval race were to ensue. The agreements reached in 1921-22,
however, made it harder for Japan to leverage that advantage. Under
multilateral diplomatic pressure, Japan withdrew from Russian
Siberia, from the northern half of Sakhalin Island and from Shantung
province--the former German concession--in China. Tokyo also
supported a greatly diluted four-power pact (United States, Great
Britain, France and Japan) based solely on consultation to replace
the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

While the arrangements made in 1921-22 were criticized after December
7, 1941 as having given unfair advantage to Japan--not least by Dean
Acheson in his memoirs4--Hughes' strategy was no utopian disarmament
fantasy, but one based on realist calculations. (Whether those
calculations were made wisely remains a topic of debate among
historians.) Hughes aimed at a great power concert that addressed the
interests of every power, and that gave each something of value that
could not be had unilaterally.

In his opening address to the Conference on November 12, 1921, Hughes
stunned the audience with his consummate presentation calling for a
ten-year ban on capital ship construction and citing the particulars
of naval limits based on relative equivalencies for Great Britain,
United States, Japan, France and Italy. Hughes thus took an enormous
risk, for he had not invited any prior consultation with the affected
states, violating traditional diplomatic practice to the extreme. But
he never wavered from the 5-5-3 ratio principle as the best option
for implementing a naval reduction plan. In stressing that all other
methods lacked credibility, Hughes put to the conferees a stark
choice: accept the Hughes formula or face a costly and accelerating
naval race. Since the United States bore the brunt of the naval
sacrifices by forfeiting the greater part of its 1916 capital ship
construction program, Hughes was able to reach an accord by making
only marginal additional concessions to the other four parties.

The five-power naval treaty was a major achievement: For the first
time in history, nations were committed to a common standard of
measurement for naval armaments and legally bound to limiting the
total tonnage of their capital ships. As important, Hughes believed
that he had broken the inexorable momentum of an arms race that could
lead to a Pacific war in which America would be at an inherent
disadvantage, not least because of its exposed position in the
Philippines. At the same time, Hughes understood the need for the
United States to maintain its relative naval strength in the interest
of peace and security.