"You Americans . . ."

When famed Communist-line Physicist Irene Joliot-Curie arrived from France a fortnight ago, her overnight detention on Ellis Island stirred many a U.S. citizen to protest (TIME, March 29). News of her arrival also stirred the memory of French Expert Adele Starbird, dean of women at St. Louis' Washington University. In her St. Louis Star-Times column last week, Dean Starbird recalled a 1946 interview with Mme. Joliot-Curie in Paris. Some Curie-isms:

"We were kind enough to think that you were merely stupid after the first world war. But really, our charity can scarcely extend so far in the present situation. . . .

"You Americans seem scarcely civilized. You are exactly like the Germans under Hitler. . . . Your workingmen are fools who . . . are satisfied with a raise in wages when they should be organizing to overthrow your Government.

"You are deliberately fomenting war. You are imperialists and you want war. . . . You will attack the U.S.S.R. but it will conquer you through the power of its idea. . . . With or without war, there will be no civilization at all in the United States ten years from now."

Dean Starbird reported that, by the time the interview ended, Mme. Joliot-Curie had become "molten lava." Last week Visitor Joliot-Curie was still erupting. In Seattle, she gave her explanation--the usual Communist line--of U.S.-Soviet tension. The entire trouble, she announced, lay with U.S. citizens, who "look with much more favor on fascism than on Communism." Her reasoning: "Americans think fascism has more respect for money."

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