First published in 1998

The present book is a by-product of the Research Project on Wartime Communication which was organized within the framework of the Library of Congress shortly before World War II.

As a guide to research and analysis, it was necessary to review the then current state of knowledge of political communication, particularly of war communication.

The manuscript was finished by the end of 1945, and then within the next five years there have been many changes, both in the state of research in the field and in thinking about these problems.

But the task of developing a framework for inquiry contemporaneous with the state of research is an unending one.