Chicago Tribuse June 20, 68 Mugge idge was grateful that he was a ba spared tie fulsome adulation that Ameri- T: cans used to accord the ancient British ties universities, British intellectuals, and most of TO other things British. Such testimonials com used to embarrass him in the days when but there was some slight justification for hea AS OTHERS SEE US them, but those days are gone. On Ameri- said Malcolm Muggeridge, a gadfly of British can and British campuses alike one finds star journalism, reported recently in the Sun- "the same yahoos shouting in unison the littl day Observer of London his impressions same slogans," and the political medicine their of the American mood after a trip to the men deal in tired incantations that no one their United States. He found in our fashionable quite believes, if he has the capacity to in outlook some ominous parallels to the believe them at all. S British experience, which would seem to We should say that what Muggeridge afte suggest that, if the trend is not soon has detected is a decline in faith and a and reversed, the United States may well find rise in the penitential mood. Few are the ish itself following Britain on the downhill voices of conviction, with the exception of for the student radicals, who are nihilists, and Tha trail. We don't ascribe Mr. Muggeridge's ir- the black power rabble-rousers, who toil alr reverent judgments to petty malice, for not, neither do they spin, but preach a clo he is an acute observer, as much at home confection of rubble, ashes, and a guar- edu on this side of the water as on his home anteed annual wage, at the expense of grounds, and he has a sneaking affection those who do work, for the benefit of those for us. Most of what he has to say is who don't. probably apparent to Americans who are If the malaise over Viet Nam, the not caught up in the foibles and stereotypes burning of draft cards, and the activities P of the day. of the Dr. Spocks and Rev. Coffins signify cou Among the academic intellectuals he ] anything, many Americans no longer sup- fusi found solid opposition to the draft and a port their fighting men in their country's Rh view of the Viet Cong as "a little people wars. If the lamentations of "liberals" in by valiantly struggling to be free, as the Mad suburbia and preachments from the pulpits Bri Mahdi and his dancing dervishes were have validity, the uniform of today's intel- ous in Gladstone's eyes." lectual organization man is sackcloth and der "A soured old English leftist," Mug- ashes. The preoccupation with social and ap geridge remarks, "encounters his own spiritual shortcomings overrides preoccu- past in these upper-class Americans vir- pation with the soul, which, as Mug- alt. tuously resolved to shed their privileges geridge wryly remarks, is in any event, itar before they even have any, to liberate their conceded to be a monopoly of the black ana empire before they have acquired it." The "soul brothers." pub very phrases of their discourse come out It was not thus in England's expansive on of the pages of "enlightened" English days, when Drake and the Iron Duke and err periodicals of many years ago, calling on that breed believed in themselves and their in the colonials to be of good cheer until the country, with no misgivings about being Rh new dawn arrives. Muggeridge says: right, nor was it so here in the days when F "Perhaps the American experience is we still permitted ourselves to have heroes he fated to be, as it were, a retrospective dry instead of being commanded to proclaim sec run of ours-going broke without ever remorse for everything and anything. It and becoming a welfare state, losing colonial is not too late for us to have it the other of th wars without having any colonies, and way, but it will take some belief in what culai rent by a class war without having any is right about our country, instead of take classes." forever crying about all that is wrong. seen XXC6