in Ohio, he planned to consult the "best minds" of the country on appointments, and they dutifully journeyed to Marion to offer their counsel. Harding chose pro-League Charles Evans Hughes as his Secretary of State, ignoring the advice of Senator Lodge and others. After Charles G. Dawes declined the Treasury position, he chose Pittsburgh banker Andrew W. Mellon, one of the richest people in the country. He appointed Herbert Hoover as United States Secretary of Commerce. RNC Chairman Will Hays was made Postmaster General, then a cabinet post; he left after a year in the position to become chief censor to the motion picture industry. The two Harding cabinet appointees who darkened the reputation of his administration by their involvement in scandal were Harding's Senate friend, Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, the Interior Secretary, and Daugherty, the Attorney General. Fall was a Western rancher and former miner, and was pro-development. He was opposed by conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot, who wrote, "it would have been possible to pick a worse man for Secretary of the Interior, but not altogether easy". The New York Times mocked the Daugherty appointment, stating that rather than select one of the best minds, Harding had been content "to choose merely a best friend". Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, in their volume on Harding's presidency, suggest that the appointment made sense then, since Daugherty was "a competent lawyer well-acquainted with the seamy side of politics ... a first-class political troubleshooter and someone Harding could trust". Foreign policy European relations and formally ending the war Harding made it clear when he appointed Hughes as Secretary of State that the former justice would run foreign policy, a change from Wilson's hands-on management of international affairs. Hughes had to work within some broad outlines; after taking office, Harding hardened his stance on the League of Nations, deciding the U.S. would not join even a scaled-down version of the League. With the Treaty of Versailles unratified by the Senate, the U.S. remained technically at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Peacemaking began with the Knox–Porter Resolution, declaring the U.S. at peace and reserving any rights granted under Versailles. Treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary, each containing many of the non-League provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, were ratified in 1921. This still left the question of relations between the U.S. and the League. Hughes' State Department initially