Following the British example, Creel sought a massive and totalizing seizure of the nation’s attention. For this, a flood of government communication was necessary, for he understood that “to conduct as well as accommodate this torrent he needed to command every possible sluice, the broader the better.” Toward this end there was “no medium of appeal that we did not employ. The printed word, the spoken word, the motion picture, the telegraph, the cable, the wireless, the poster, the sign-board—all these were used in our campaign to make our own people and all other peoples understand the causes that compelled America to take arms.”

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 156