Mr. Muggeridge is disinclined to be apocalyptic about America's future, although he has to concede that the current situation-with Watergate roiling away and the bitterness over Vietnam by no means assuaged-gives America-bashers grounds for Schadenfreude. WFB: "It is widely assumed that there was a terrible collapse of English statecraft before the First World War and before the Second World War. Was there the equivalent gloating in America that you know of?" MM: "I wouldn't have said in America so much, but certainly on the Continent, and in my lifetime I've seen this attitude. When I was young, the Empire was at its maximum strength and I felt this incredible hatred that everybody had for the British. I think the only difference ... is that the British rather liked that-it rather pleased them to be regarded as absolutely unspeakable wherever they went-whereas the Americans have no taste for it."