25th June
Tiso and Tuka are discussing the deepening mystery of the Chief of the Navy with the General Malar. Starting with why he's only part time, the question of why a landlocked country has a Chief of the Navy being too painful to even think about.
"Not that I doubt General Turanec's qualities, but shouldn't be be devoting all his efforts to his army duties?" Tiso asked.
"Ordinarily I'd agree, but he was by far the outstanding candidate so we felt we had to appoint him." Malar replied.
"But why? What was so wrong with the other candidates?" Tuka asked.
"Allow me to demonstrate." Malar said, despatching an aide to bring in the other candidate.
Shortly afterwards Jozef Hora walked into the room.
"There must be some mistake, that's the poet Jozef Hora." Tuka exclaimed. "He's completely unqualified."
"And he's Czech." Tiso added.
The assembled men spat on the floor in disgust at the mere thought.
Malar nodded and then said "It gets worse."
"It gets worse?! He's a communist poet famous for writing anti-fascist tracts! How on earth could he be
less qualified to be the Chief of the Navy for a right wing autocracy?" Tuka screamed.
"I'll show you." Malar said. Turning to Hora he asked. "So if you were chief of the navy what would be your plans?"
Hora looked up keenly and began outlining detailed schemes for a vast Slovak battefleet that would seek a Mahanian decisive battle to destroy it's enemies.
Malar turned back to Tiso and Tuka and said. "You see it does get worse, he's also an idiot."
Hora's skills could apparently have helped Slovkia retain it's knowledge of capital ship construction, if only it had knowledge of such things in the first place.
Considering the history of the Slovak General Staff Tiso felt this was a bit rich. Turning to General Turanec he asked. "So what is your naval policy?"
"To promote a doctrine of Open Seas." Turanec replied promptly.
"So that's a policy of developing and constructing destroyers to keep open our non-existent sea lanes of communication then?" Tuka asked sarcastically.
Turanec looked offended. "Of course not, that would just be silly. Open Seas is the codename for the long term plan of declaring war on Hungary and Romania and annexing both of them to Greater Slovakia, in order to 'open' a land corridor to the 'seas'."
Both Tiso and Tuka wondered if all the decorations and medals might have gone to Turanec's head.
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Bonus Footnote - According to the internet Jozef Hora was indeed a Czech communist poet.