George T. Eggleston
George Teeple Eggleston (November 21, 1906 - July 7, 1990) was a cartoonist, yachtsman, author, and editor of the isolationist publication Scribner's Commentator. He was born in Oakland, California and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley.
Life
George Eggleston was an early editor of Life magazine before it was bought by Henry Luce. Under Luce, the format of Life was changed from satire to the famous picture magazine which Eggleston continued to edit. Scribner's Commentator ceased publication after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He joined the United States Navy during the war but was harassed by Jewish columnist and ADL operative Walter Winchell who started a letter-writing campaign to get him removed from the service. After the war Eggleston became an editor of Reader's Digest.
George Eggleston was the author of several books on Christian teachings and nautical topics. In 1979 he published Roosevelt, Churchill, and the World War II Opposition. He was a longtime sailor and member of the New York Yacht Club.
In 1957 he and his wife moved to island of St. Lucia in the West Indies. In 1979 they moved to Sarasota, Florida where he died from a bone marrow ailment.
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When Eggleston was editor of Scribner's Commentator, the magazine received an anonymous gift of $15,000 in cash, which supposedly came from Henry Ford, who approved of Eggleston's editorial line. The government and the columnists seized on this windfall to persecute Eggleston and the magazine's publisher, Douglas Stewart, on the grounds that the money came from Hitler.
The vendetta continued after the war when Eggleston was grilled by government attorneys and confronted with two German diplomats who "confessed" they had given his magazine the money in 1941. When defense counsel was able to show that the two Germans had been jailed and tortured for several months and that Eggleston had been thousands of miles from where they claimed to have met him in prewar days, the government's case collapsed and Stewart, who had been brought to trial, was found innocent. Eggleston was finally permitted to spend his remaining years in peace. After working as an editor of Reader's Digest, he retired to a life of sailing and escapism on the Negro Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
Eggleston's book is one more proof that the people in charge of the U.S. in World War II and the people who still run the country are capable of anything --the most underhanded chicanery, the most reprehensible frame-ups, even the use of torture and assassination. Yet somehow most Americans still think their country is a never-never land where such things cannot be. How can the kings of Camelot be the twisters of thumb screws? They were and they will continue to be until the buried facts of modern history are exhumed for all to see and ponder.
Note: In a fascinating aside Eggleston quotes from an article by Ernest Hemingway published in Esquire (Nov. 1935), It is a piece of almost incredible prophecy.
- Your correspondent believes that the fate of our country for the next hundred years or so depends on the extent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambition. If he is ambitious only to serve this country as Cleveland was, we and our children will be fortunate. If he is ambitious personally to leave a great name to eclipse the name he bears, which was made famous by another man, we will be out of luck, because the sensational improvements that can be made legally in the country in time of peace are being rapidly exhausted.
