When the President returned from his preparedness tour, he found himself at the centre of conflicting views as to method; on the one hand, Representative Hay of the Military Affairs Committee, advocated the use of the National Guard as the new army; on the other hand, Secretary Garrison advocated an increase of the Regular Army to 142,000 men and a new "continental army" of 400,000 men, with reserves of state militia. It was the recurrent conflict between the Army and Congress, between the military department's desire for a strong force and Congress' fear of "militarism." The Garrison plan met with decided opposition in the House, and upon the President's refusal to lend support to his Secretary of War in the programme he had outlined in his report of 1915, Mr. Garrison resigned. Immediately all the enemies of the President centred about the retiring Secretary and proclaimed him a very much abused official. The letter which the President addressed to Secretary Garrison is as follows: THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON January 17, 1916. MY DEAR MR. SECRETARY: I am very much obliged to you for your letters of January twelfth and January fourteenth. They make your views with regard to adequate measures of preparation for national defence sharply clear. I am sure that I already understood just what your views were, but I am glad to have them restated in this succinct and striking way. You believe, as I do, that the chief thing necessary is, that we should have a trained citizen reserve and that the training, organization and control of that reserve should be under immediate federal direction. But apparently I have not succeeded in making my own position equally clear to you, though I feel sure that I have made it perfectly clear to Mr. Hay. It is that I am not irrevocably or dogmatically committed to any one plan of providing the nation with such a reserve and am cordially willing to discuss alternative proposals. Any other position on my part would indicate an attitude towards the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives which I should in no circumstances feel at liberty to assume. It would never be proper or possible for me to say to any committee of the House of Representatives that so far as my participation in legislation was concerned they would have to take my plan or none.