King's paranoia about a plot to force him out was sparked by the fact that the Canadian military had 1.1 million people out of a total population of 11 million serving in their ranks, of whom half had "gone active", which for him made the inability for the Army to find 15,000 men simply inconceivable. The Canadian historian Desmond Morton wrote that King's question was legitimate, but the answers were far more complex than King's conspiracy theory of certain Liberal cabinet ministers working to oust him in conjunction with the military.