“I don’t know of any call that has aroused my emotions more than this has. I have worked with you and I have tried to be honest with you, and God knows, if I am called to responsibility, I am going to be honest with everybody in the world. I don’t know if I can meet these responsibilities fully, but I know I can meet them with the same honesty that I have treated you. “I am just a plain ordinary fellow, but I can be on the square, and that’s all there is to it.” He had the distinction of being the first Senator elected to the Presidency while serving in that office and also the first active newspaper man to wear the presidential toga. The outstanding feature of President Harding’s administration was the Conference on Limitation of Armaments which met on November 12, 1921. To it the President invited Great Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, and China to send delegates. Secretary of State Hughes presided. Those who attended were Prince Tokugawa, Ambassador Jusserand, Albert Sarrault, M. Viviani, Premier Briand, Senators G. Pearce Underwood, Elihu Root, Lodge, and Schanzer, Lord Balfour, Ambassador Geddes, Sir Robert Borden, Sir John Salmond, and Srinivasa Castri. The voice of American womanhood was heard when the President appointed four well-known women as members of America’s advisory council. These women represented ably the various schools of feminine thought of our land. They were Mrs. Thomas G. Winter, of Minneapolis, President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird, of Boston, leader of the National League of Women Voters of Massachusetts; Mrs. Kathrine Phillips Edson, of Los Angeles, author of many welfare projects for women, and an active suffragist; and Mrs. Eleanor Franklin Egan, well-known writer and authority on the Far East. The presence of the women added to the importance of the social functions arranged; not since the war had the city been as festive and the entertaining as general as during the session of the Conference. Those close to President Harding, who knew how staunchly he believed in the men he picked for positions of honour and trust, believed his illness greatly aggravated by the disclosures of the Senate investigation of the oil scandal, which had already brought dishonour to one of his Cabinet and was threatening to involve others in high places. CHAPTER XVIII FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF CALVIN COOLIDGE _August 3, 1923, to March 4, 1925_ The death of President Harding in San Francisco, coming so swiftly and unexpectedly on the evening of August 2, 1923, at 7:30, stunned all of his immediate party, none more so than his friend and secretary George Christian, who immediately flashed the news of the national calamity to Vice President Coolidge, vacationing in a little Vermont house, the home of his father, John C. Coolidge.