PARIS, March 19: The blistering Franco-US row over Iraq is spilling over into the sanctuaries of knowledge as some US academics join the campaign of insults building up against the French.

E-mails from prestigious halls of learning in the United States paint the French as a spineless lily-livered nation, conquered by Germany yesterday and cowardice today.

“I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me,” General George S. Patton is quoted as saying in a three-page missive containing five times as many anti-French bites, complete with pictures of those who purportedly came up with them.

“I just love the French. They taste like chicken,” says a person signing his or her name as Hannibal Lecter.

Another quoted the US writer Mark Twain: “France has neither winter nor summer nor morals... France has usually been governed by prostitutes.”

The document was e-mailed to a leading French academic, human geneticist Philippe Froguel, from colleagues at the University of Chicago, who themselves received it from other academics.

“This is more than just bad taste,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “This is racist, and what worries me is that while you might expect this from some of the press or the politicians, you don’t expect it from academics.”

Froguel, professor of molecular genetics at Queen Mary and Westfield College at the University of London and director of Barts London Genome Centre, said he had chided his US colleagues over the insults.

“I reminded them that they have a bit of a short memory: they may’ve freed us from the Germans, but we freed them from the English.”

Under a poster titled “Ultimate surrender”, the document proposes replacements for the French national anthem such as “Running Scared” by Roy Orbison, “Runaway” by Del Shannon or “Raise Your Hands” by Jon Bon Jovi.

And as the diplomatic face-off continued between Paris on the one hand, and Washington and London on the other, France lashed out Wednesday at Britain, saying it was “shocked and saddened” by government remarks about France.—AFP