RAYMOND GRAM SWING - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 04/12/1943 - HFSID 34180

RAYMOND GRAM SWING
His signed vigorous response to a reader who criticized him for criticizing Charles De Gaulle
Typed Letter signed: "Raymond Gram Swing". One page, 8½x11. Washington, District of Columbia, April 12, 1943. On personal letterhead to Mrs. George Worthington, Jr. In full: "In reply to your letter of recent date, you are, of course, quite within your rights to criticize me, as you do, for criticizing General de Gaulle. But your criticism would have more effect on me if you had been reasonable about it. I criticized the General for something he did. You did not pretend to know better the circumstances which called for my criticism, or challenge my knowledge of them. It happens I did know what I was talking about. You simply criticized me for criticizing. You did not say the criticism was unwarranted. You said it was out of place. That isn't helpful. I have just as much right to criticize General de Gaulle as any other mortal. I would make poor use of this right, if I criticized unfairly. In this case, since General de Gaulle himself corrected the action which I criticized, I gather that I was not unfair. Yours sincerely". Raymond Gram Swing (1887-1968) was a journalist who first worked at a newspaper in 1906 with the Cleveland Press. Just seven years later, he was the Chicago Daily Newsbureau chief for the paper's Berlin, Germany department. His coverage of WWI, particularly Big Bertha and the Dardanelles campaign, established name recognition of the journalist nationwide. He shifted towards radio journalism, which is where he reported on WWII for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Swing strongly believed in gender and racial equality, so when his feminist and suffragist wife Betty Gram requested that both of them take both surnames, he agreed. They remained married from 1919-1944, but upon their divorce he had trouble shaking off her surname of Gram. He came to be known as Raymond Gram Swing during his heyday. Tape at top left and right corner. Lightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition.