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Individualist. One Swedish journalist who has stubbornly resisted regimentation by Nazi imperialists is Torgny Segerstedt, editor-owner of Göteborg's famed Handels-Och Sjöfartstidning (Trade and Shipping Gazette). So proud of its liberal tradition is the Gazette that it has been called Sweden's Manchester Guardian. Segerstedt's column, I Dag (Today), is masterful journalism. He has a rare faculty for clothing deadly sarcasm (about Hitler, Stalin, various native enemies of democracy) in words so innocent that even Minister Westman cannot dub them "offensive." Sample: "What cannot be hidden is the opinion the Swedish people have of the powers which are struggling to dominate them. . . . They cannot be made to believe that we must huddle together like quiet mice, hoping the cat will go easy on us."
A savage campaign of abuse has been launched against Segerstedt in such Nazi journals as the Hamburg Fremdenblatt. Before Christmas, when Germany and Sweden were on the eve of a long-awaited trade pact, it was an open secret that one Swedish concession demanded by the Nazis was that Torgny Segerstedt be silenced. Rumor said that, for every hostile story in the Gazette, Nazi negotiators threatened to have a Swedish ship sunk without warning.
Fear of German reprisals drove a group of Göteborg shipowners to issue a public protest against Editor Segerstedt. In an effort to bridle his tongue, they invited the Government to indict him. Newsmen in Sweden were taking bets last week on how long Editor Segerstedt and Sweden's press would last before censorship got them under. Segerstedt wrote each day's column as if it might be his farewell to Swedish journalism. Said he, one day last week: "We haven't much more prestige to lose in Britain, France and the U. S. In these countries we are increasingly regarded as a small German dependency."