He was one of the most influential news commentators of his era, heard by people worldwide as a leading American voice from Britain during World War II.
Describing himself during his student days as "a prankster who found freshman math 'totally incomprehensible,'" Swing only lasted for a year at Oberlin.
When World War I broke out in 1914, he covered major battles and was the first to report on the existence of Big Bertha, a massive 420 mm artillery cannon.
She recalled: [Swing] tells how in December, 1914, the German authorities entrusted him with a peace offer to carry to Sir Edward Grey.
Germany wanted peace, would withdraw from Belgium and France, would ask for a financial indemnity as a German face-saver, but would not expect payment.
Crossing the Sea of Marmora on a Turkish freighter, the Nagara, as the British submarine HMS E11 overtook the ship, one of the officers signaled for Swing to do the talking.
"[5] In 1922, Swing left the New York Herald, for which he had been "the eminent Berlin correspondent," to join The Wall Street Journal as head of its staff in Europe.
As the Nazis rose in power and influence and began to threaten Europe, Mutual increased his broadcasts to five times a week.
In The Historian, David H. Culbert described Swing as a liberal who voted for Norman Thomas in 1926 and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
[8] Because of his prestige and credibility, Swing was chosen to be chairman of the Council for Democracy, a group founded in 1940 to support American rearmament and combat domestic isolationism.
Funded by Henry Luce, the Council was led by Harvard political science professor Carl Joachim Friedrich and Charles Douglas Jackson, vice president of Time magazine.
In the spring of 1951, after Swing had been offered a position with the Voice of America (VOA), the entertainment industry periodical Counterattack called him a Communist sympathizer.