To be fair, Creel's nationalism and his conception of a "war-will" was a far cry from the more malevolent strain that would arise later. "In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression," he insisted. "Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive." But if he was a second-rate fascist, as a propagandist he was of the first rank. For, as he averred, what he practiced was "Propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the 'propagation of faith.' " Following the British example, Creel sought a massive and totalizing seizure of the nation's attention.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 155