But first we must have professional advice. I would be very much obliged to you if you would get the best minds in the department to work on the subject: I mean the men who have been most directly in contact with actual modern conditions, who have most thoroughly comprehended what the Navy must be in the future in order to stand upon an equality with the most efficient and most practically serviceable. I want their advice, a programme by them formulated in the most definite way. Whether we can reasonably propose the whole of it to the Congress immediately or not we can determine when we have studied it. The important thing now is to know fully what we need. Congress will certainly welcome such advice and follow it to the limit of its opportunity. It should be a programme planned for a consistent and progressive development of this great defensive arm of the nation and should be of such a kind as to commend itself to every patriotic and practical man.     I shall return to Washington in a few days and shall be glad to take     this important matter up with you at your early convenience.     Cordially and faithfully yours,       WOODROW WILSON.     HON. JOSEPHUS DANIELS,       Secretary of the Navy. Immediately after the war message there arose an insistent demand for a coalition cabinet. It was the beginning of the Republican drive for what was called a bi-partisan government. Republicans chose to forget the experiences of England and France under their coalition cabinets, and when the President refused to act upon the suggestion, the impression was subtly conveyed to the unthinking that the President's refusal arose from his dislike of counsel and coöperation, and his unwillingness to share the responsibilities and glories of the war with people outside his own party. As an historian, the President knew the troubles of Washington with a coalition cabinet, Lincoln's embarrassments from Cabinet members not of his own party, McKinley's sagacious refusal in 1898 to form a coalition cabinet. He also knew human nature; knew that with the best intentions, men sometimes find it difficult to work whole-heartedly with a leader of a political party not their own. He could not risk a chance of division, in his own official family in the face of the common enemy. The President looked upon the agitation for a coalition cabinet as a partisan effort to hamper and embarrass his administration, and so he coldly turned away from every suggestion that looked toward the establishment of a cabinet of the kind suggested by his too-solicitous Republican friends. The following note which I addressed to the President and his reply, bear upon the subject: THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON DEAR GOVERNOR: