Foreign News: No Joke

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When Satevepost printed a story called "See Russia and Die—Laughing" by Eve Garrette Grady (TIME, March 2), most readers assumed she would be expelled from Russia on the ground that it was generally offensive. Not so. Mrs. Grady (wife of a U. S. mining engineer employed by the Soviet Regime) was expelled with her husband last week (as she said, "with every courtesy") for one small specific reason.

"Your article was not considered generally offensive," she was told, "but it contained an offensive reference to Josef Stalin."

Mrs. Grady had called the Dictator "Soviet Russia's most powerful and most unpopular citizen," had told a joke on him which she said was going the rounds of Moscow purely as a joke, not as a true story. The joke:

A Jewish boy has just rescued from drowning a man whose identity he does not know.

Man: Name to me your greatest desire and it shall be granted. . . . I am Stalin!

Boy: Well, if you are Stalin—why, if it's all the same to you, just don't tell anyone it was me that saved you.