Gorbachev was different from all his predecessors. He knew how cruel the Soviet system was.

When in 1967 the University of Virginia recruited Professor Norman A. Graebner from the University of Illinois to teach diplomatic history, a huge row ensued.

We were stirred, never shaken, by our real-life James Bond figure. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett was the picture of an English aristocrat, without a hint of stuffiness. So genial, so approachable, we young University of Virginia students were thrilled by each of his lectures on diplomatic history—especially about anything on England and Germany in the interwar period.

What we can gain from the origins of the Great War is that strategic ambiguity played a role in bringing on that cataclysm.

We should call for a “Mothers’ March on Moscow.” We should urge no violence, nothing radical, nothing revolutionary. But the idea just might take root among women in the vast Russian heartland.

We should seek a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Torgau in Germany. We need a negotiated end to the current war in Ukraine.

With those words—“Her Majesty’s Government will…”—the speech from the throne was not read by the monarch. For the first time since the beginning of the present reign, this important address to Parliament was read for her by her 74-year-old son, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

John F. Kennedy never flinched, but he showed his mettle during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was his finest hour. Will this one be ours?

So now I will pray for all Russian dissenters, who are in great peril. And I will pray for Vladimir Putin, too.