Finance, commerce, the national armaments by sea and land, judicial procedure, church government, education, even art and science - everything, in short - emerged recast from his shaping hand.
He refused to join Napoleon in any proposal for the coercion of Austria or the limitation of her armaments.
The most important step taken by President Harding during the first year of his administration was the calling of an international conference on the limitation of armaments.
They refused to permit the vital problem of limitation of armaments to be side-tracked, and surprised the conference by proposing a ten-year naval holiday and a drastic scrapping of tonnage by the three chief naval Powers.
But it contained also a bold indictment of the whole system of foreign policy then in vogue, founded on ideas as to the balance of power and the necessity of large armaments for the protection of commerce.