looks as if mass democracies positively require neatly packaged and emotionally charged explanations of the social and political environment as a substitute for religion. At all events, the modern science of public relations has advanced far enough for cer­ tain regimes, or for those who seek to overthrow them, to make a calculated appeal to the vanities, anxieties and frustrations of ordinary people by offering highly simplified explanations of a baffling world, often in easily grasped pictorial or dramatic forms, whether the object is to condition obedience or incite to 'struggle'. The advent of the mass media is generally, if unfairly, taken to have opened limitless new op­ portunities for the manipulation of our thought-processes, even below the threshold of consciousness.