The thunder of the guns of the first world war was accompanied by another kind of barrage the war of words between the belligerents. Within each embattled nation, words were seen as powerful movers of men and women; they became mobilizers of the national spirit, calls to courage, to sacrifice and, finally, to simple endurance. Long after the killing stopped, men debated the meaning and importance of the verbal conflict. To some participants it had all been like a prep-school prank, an exciting happening, signifying little; others drew from it portentous meaning and a stern lesson. But almost every interested observer realized that something vital about mass communications had changed during the war and the debate centred around the nature of this change. Some saw the journalist as 'an engineer of souls' playing on the 'whole keyboard of human instincts . . . to incite to action', and employing 'a tremendous apparatus the press.' Others felt that 'the most careful experiments and surveys have failed to substantiate the wide claims on behalf of mass media or the fears of critics of mass communication.'2 The first quotation, from Serge Chapotkin, a journalist victim of Nazism, indicates that words are the all-powerful fathers to the deed, and in itself, by its strong wording and condemnatory tone, arouses feelings of fear and anxiety. Interestingly enough, however, the second statement, by Denis McQuail, a professor of sociology, is also emotionally loaded. Its calm scholarly tone implies a scientific attitude, a quiet confidence, indeed, in the ability of rational analysis to measure the persuasive power of words. But the direct connection between word and deed remains elusive. Indeed, the word 'propaganda' itself rings pejoratively