Word: naval
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ostensibly the subject of the notes was limitation of naval and military armament. Their covert purpose to enhance the potency of the British Navy was unmasked by the Hearst Press, sternly denounced by President Calvin Coolidge and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, and is now entirely defunct. (TIME, Oct. 29). But the military purpose of the notes remains. Upon it last week interest focused. Revealed was the price exacted by French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand before he would consent to support against U. S. opposition the naval projects of British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain. The French price, high, was that...
...Austen Chamberlain began by regretting that on the two capital naval and military questions the French and British found themselves in diametrically opposed positions. English public opinion believes traditionally that volunteer armies have a defensive character, whereas conscript armies are intended for offensive warfare. On the other hand, he understands that in French opinion obligatory military service appears as a guarantee of a policy of peace, while a volunteer army takes on the character of a pretorian guard...
...continued by saying concessions were necessary on both sides to reach a general agreement, and that if he could obtain a concession from the French on the naval side British public opinion would probably give its adhesion to Sir Austen Chamberlain's ceding a point on the military aspect of the problem...
Socialist members of the Chamber's Finance Committee fairly screamed objections to the budgeted military, naval and air expenditure of six billion eight hundred million francs ($265,000,000) during 1929. They thought that at least one of the billions ought to be spent on measures of social relief. Particularly did they object to an allotment of 150,000,000 francs ($5,850,000) for the construction of fortifications along the frontier of disarmed Germany...
...course such Socialist heckling perturbed not at all the "Iron Premier," who, backed by the military and naval experts of France and supported by a public which still fears German attack, can jam through billions for defense more easily than for any other purpose...