The feature in the current issue of Reader's Digest (circ. 17.5 million) is a condensation of The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, a spine-chilling tale about a "gentle spy" by Quentin Reynolds. In Reynolds' crackling, reportorial prose, the book describes "quiet, religious" George DuPre, a Canadian who entered British Intelligence early in World War II and prepared for a strange mission. For nine months he was trained to behave like "the village halfwit" so that he could play the part of a harmless, moronic French garage mechanic after he was dropped behind the German lines. The book told how DuPre helped smuggle Allied flyers out of enemy territory until the Gestapo picked him up. The Nazis tortured him with a sulphuric-acid enema, poured boiling water into his clamped-open mouth, squashed his finger in a vise, gave him savage beatings, etc. But DuPre, by his own account, never told the Germans anything, just mumbled dumbly, "I don't know," until he was finally released.
Last week DuPre, Author Reynolds, the Reader's Digest and Random House, the book's publisher, were all themselves subjected to the most horrible torture in publishing. Across Page 1 the Calgary (Alberta) Herald (circ. 56,456) was the headline: CALGARIAN ADMITS SECRET SERVICE STORY WAS A FABRICATION! GEORGE DUPRE TELLS HERALD HE WAS NEVER
IN FRANCE AS SPY. Said the Herald: "The story of George DuPre, as related in the ... Reader's Digest, is a fiction. Millions of people in every country in which the Digest is published will have been taken in ... There are so many holes in [his story] that it is hard to imagine DuPre expecting to get away with it." There was no denying the Herald's expose. Author Reynolds announced candidly that he had been "duped" by the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated." Reader's Digest Editor DeWitt Wallace was equally stunned, explained that the Digest would confess its error in its January issue. "This mistake," said Random House's President Bennett Cerf, "is a beaut."
Awful Truth. DuPre first attracted the Digest's attention six months ago, after giving a number of lectures and broadcasts in Canada on his war experiences. He was invited to suburban Pleasantville, N.Y. to meet the Digest editors. "If there ever was a man who inspired confidence and seemed deeply religious." recalls Editor Wallace, "it was he." The Digest asked Reynolds to write DuPre's story, later sold the idea of the book to Random House. Reynolds went to Canada with DuPre, branch manager of Calgary's Commercial Chemicals, Ltd., found that he was an outstanding citizen in Calgary, leader in the Boy Scout movement and an active member of United Church of Canada. At war's end he worked as confidential assistant and security officer to Nathan E. Tanner, Alberta's Minister of Mines and Minerals, who supervised the provinces' vital natural resources.