As a war leader, King sought to avoid repeating what he regarded as the mistakes of his Conservative predecessor, Sir Robert Borden, in the First World War, which meant avoiding a situation where conscription might be necessary, and initially attempted to limit Canada's participation in the war solely to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). King had described the BCATP in a statement as "Canada's most effective contribution to the war effort", and privately complained that the British should not had asked for a division for Europe before approaching him with the BCATP as he would never have sent the 1st Canadian Division to Britain if he could have settled only for the BCATP. As King saw it, "a big RCAF could never lead to conscription".