Word: frees
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...British Navy is big enough to whip any two European navies, strong enough to command the English Channel, the North Sea and the whole Eastern Mediterranean, thus leaving the French Navy free to police the Western Mediterranean...
...Free Lances v. Professionals. All these estimates of the quality of Europe's military machines are subject to debate. In the debate there are in general two sides. Free-lance authorities such as bulky, unruffled Major Eliot, earnest, deep-eyed Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times...
London Telegraph's L. G. S. Payne, or London Times's Liddell Hart, are more inclined than the military "professionals" of the war departments to weigh intangible factors-and to be skeptical of physical achievements such as Germany's vaunted rearmament. Free lances argue that the men in the profession are partly interested in the propaganda value of releasing juicy figures regarding the strength of presumed enemies, partly taken in by the tremendous enthusiasm which attachés in various foreign nations develop for the particular military machines that come under their eyes...
Professionals criticize the free lances for using popular stereotypes (the "robot" Germans, the "individualistic" French, the "cowardly wops," the "bemused" Russians). They point out that before the World War the German Imperial Army was drilled to the teeth, yet the German mechanical marvel did not fall apart before the attacks of the "individualistic" French and British. Always good military technicians, the Germans teach their men infiltration tactics, stress individualist action by small groups of soldiers, encourage initiative all through the ranks...
...opinion is over air-strength. The claims of the British to a superior air personnel are dismissed by the professionals as fantastic. Aviation, the professionals say, is a young man's game; hence a lack of good pilots in the early-thirty age brackets is not critical. Free-lance figures for British and French air strength are judged far too high. Free lance authorities set British monthly plane replacement capacity at 600, professionals say it is closer to 240. They admit, however, that the British production rate is rising. But, while the British may have solved some of their...