Conference were later sent to the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and China. Portugal was interested because of her settlement at Macao, the oldest European settlement in China. Holland of course is one of the great colonial powers of the Pacific. While Belgium has no territorial interests in the Orient, she has for years been interested in Chinese financial matters. The Washington Conference convened in plenary session November 12, 1921, in Memorial Continental Hall. Seats were reserved on the main floor for press representatives, and the galleries were reserved for officials and those individuals who were fortunate enough to secure tickets of admission. The question of open diplomacy which had been much discussed, was settled at the first session by Secretary Hughes, who, in his introductory speech, boldly laid the American proposals for the limitation of navies before the Conference. There were in all seven plenary sessions, but the subsequent sessions did little more than confirm agreements that had already been reached in committee. The real work of the Conference was carried on by committees, and from the meetings of these committees the public and press representatives were as a matter of course excluded. There were two principal committees, one on the Limitation of Armament, and the other on Pacific and Far Eastern Questions. There were various sub-committees, in the work of which technical delegates participated. Minutes were kept of the meetings of the two principal committees, and after each meeting a communique was prepared for the press. In fact, the demand for publicity defeated to a large extent its own ends. So much matter was given to the press that when it was published in full very few people had time to read it. As a general rule, the less real information there was to give out, the longer were the communiques. Experienced correspondents maintained that decisions on delicate questions were made with as much secrecy in Washington as at Paris. The plan of the United States for the limitation of armament presented by Secretary Hughes at the first session proposed (1) that all programs for the construction of capital ships, either actual or projected, be abandoned; (2) that a large number of battleships of older types still in commission be scrapped; and (3) that the allowance of auxiliary combatant craft, such as cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and airplane carriers, be in proportion to the tonnage of capital ships. These proposals, it was claimed, would leave the powers under consideration in the same relative positions. Under this plan the United States would be allowed 500,000 tons of capital ships, Great Britain 500,000 tons, and Japan 300,000 tons.