Raymond
Swing was born in Cortland, New York in 1887. He was expelled from
Oberlin College for bad behaviour and found work in a barber shop.
In
1906 Swing became a journalist with The Cleveland
Press. This was followed by stints with the Richmond
Evening News, the Indianapolis
Star and the Cincinnati Times
Star. At the age of 23 he became Managing Editor of the
Indianapolis Sun. He also wrote
for radical journal, The
Nation.
On
the outbreak of the First World War Swing became
bureau chief in Germany for the Chicago
Daily News. He covered on all the major battles and was
the first to report the existence of Big
Bertha.
In
1919 Swing married the feminist Betty Gram. He shared her views on
equality and he adopted her name and now became known as Raymond Gram
Swing.
Swing
became London bureau chief for Philadelphia
Daily Ledger. He first began radio broadcasting during
the 1932 Presidential Election. After turning down the opportunity
to work for CBS (Edward
Murrow
got the job instead), Swing joined Mutual Broadcasting System.
In 1936 Swing began a weekly radio broadcast on European affairs.
Swing was a strong opponent of Adolf Hitler
and Nazi Germany and gave public
lectures on the dangers of fascism in Europe and the United States.
After
the Second World War Swing worked for ABC, BBC
and the Blue Network. Raymond
Gram Swing
died
in 1968.
(1)
Raymond Gram Swing, radio broadcast (10th May, 1943)
1933, gives perspective in still greater clarity. For on that day
the world had its warning and should have known what was in the making.
But the world hadn't been training ears to hear warnings or eyes to
see such beacons as were lit in the Berlin bonfire of books. And here
I shall repeat something about this event which I said a year ago,
and do so at the
request of the Council of Books in Wartime and the OWL
I know I didn't appreciate
the full portent of the warning of that event in Berlin. But it came
to me shortly, and on this anniversary I see again vividly the figure
of the man who taught me. He was an unusually tall, an unusually narrow
man, with legs as long as Lincoln's, a rounded stoop of the shoulders,
and a long, gaunt face. He had been chairman of the Social-Democratic
party in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic, and his name was Dr.
Rudolf Breitscheid. In my newspaper days in Germany I had come to
know him well. And after Hitler seized power I knew that he had managed
to escape to France. Then he came to London, and I was deeply moved
to hear that I should be allowed to have an hour with him alone at
the home of a member of the House of Commons.
I found him in that home,
slumped and, it seemed, almost collapsed, in a big chair. He looked
up at me with large eyes
filled with the pain one sees during a mortal illness. The first glance
at him told its story: here was a man whose life-work
was in ruins, who had lost not only his country but all possibilities
of serving his country or himself, a man bereft and broken.
I expected him to tell
me, in that hour, about himself and his escape, and to give me the
news of our personal friends in
Germany, many of whom, I knew, had been tortured by the Nazis. I was
keyed up to withstand the shock of the brutality
our friends had suffered. But I was stopped short by his tragic appearance
and was unable to start the conversation. I hoped he would begin without
prompting, in his own way.
He was silent for quite
a time, then he looked up with an expression of utter helplessness
in his face, and he said weakly, but with horror: "Swing, they're
burning books."
I was startled, and for
a moment I thought that he was being irrelevant. I was expecting news
of persecution, torture, and terrible personal disasters, and he began
by mentioning what I already knew, that in Berlin they were burning
books. But he was a true messenger of tragedy, for that was in the
furthermost depth of the tragedy, the burning of books. That was the
symbol of it.
That fire has not died,
and it will not have died until Germans themselves have free minds
again and no power remains
on the face of the earth to deny the liberty of mans mind. And when
the history of this awful war is written, there is a description of
it that would be fitting. It was the war to put out the fire which
Hitler lighted in Berlin ten years ago today.
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