Take That!

Britain considered taking drastic action against the Soviet Union in retribution for its sending tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968: it nearly didn’t send Leonid Brezhnev a Christmas card. Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart wanted to scratch “the Russians and their fellow sinners” from the greetings list, but Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s cooler head prevailed. “It seems petty to change the practice,” he wrote to Stewart. “It creates the maximum annoyance with no gain whatsoever.” (Reuters) ...But sir, that is the primary function of government.