Word count in Emacs

[B. T. Raven]

Can anyone give me a clue why the following doesn't print a number in
the mini-buffer or to the *Messages* buffer?:

(defun count-words (start end) ;; alias wce
    "Print number of words in the region."
    (interactive "r")
    (save-excursion
      (save-restriction
        (narrow-to-region start end)
        (goto-char (point-min))
        (count-matches "\\sw+"))))

an alias is assigned so that I can invoke with

M-x wce (word count emacs)

Thanks,

Ed