Picture this it you can. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte are observing the annual May Day Military parade from atop the Lenin Mausaleun in led Square. "If I had Soviet tanks," Alexander says wistfully, "I would have been invincible."

Caesar goes even further, saying that with Russian aircraft, he could have conquered the whole world and not just most of Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

"Mon Dieu," Napoleon interrupts, pulling his hand out of his jacket and waving it in exasperation. "If I had Pravda, the world would still not know of my defeat at Waterloo."

From The Ottawa Sun, 16 May 89