With the staggering costs associated with such programs, the United States' Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited delegations from the major maritime powers—France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom—to come together in Washington, D.C. to discuss, and hopefully end, the naval arms race. The subsequent Washington Naval Conference resulted in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Along with many other provisions, it limited all future battleships to a standard displacement of and a maximum gun caliber of 16-inch. It also decreed that the five countries could not construct another capital ship for ten years and could not replace any ship that survived the treaty until it was at least twenty years old.