An additional concern for King was Ralston was from Nova Scotia as were Angus MacDonald, the junior defence minister in charge of the navy and the Finance Minister J.L Ilsley . The three politicians from Nova Scotia were all close friends with C.D. Howe commenting that "the three Nova Scotians were a sub-cabinet in themselves". King was worried that if the three leading ministers from Nova Scotia were to resign together in protest against his conscription policies that it might topple his government, and much of King's time in October 1944 was spent charming MacDonald and Ilsley in an attempt to break up the Nova Scotia triumvirate. Through King felt that MacDonald disliked him for vetoing his plan to send the Royal Canadian Navy ships to the Indian Ocean because it would mean having Canadian ships under British command, he discovered that MacDonald was more conciliatory than he expected with MacDonald concerned about alienating French-Canada from English-Canada. King wrote in his diary: "Angus said he saw the difficulties. Was much concerned about everything himself, but Ralston was hard to deal with". MacDonald tended to favor bringing conscription if that was necessary to win the war, but if the former Premier of Nova Scotia was widely viewed as a possible future Prime Minister, and MacDonald wanted to avoid another 1917 style split in the Liberal Party, making him ambivalent about where he stood.