---
title: 'Careless Talk Costs Lives: "...strictly between these four walls!"'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/careless-talk-four-walls-fougasse-1940/
description: One of Fougasse's eight cartoon posters for the Ministry of Information's national campaign against careless talk, launched in February 1940.
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Careless Talk Costs Lives: "...strictly between these four walls!"](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/careless-talk-four-walls-fougasse-1940.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/careless-talk-four-walls-fougasse-1940.jpg)

# Careless Talk Costs Lives: "...strictly between these four walls!"

One of Fougasse's eight cartoon posters for the Ministry of Information's national campaign against careless talk, launched in February 1940. Two men gossip in armchairs, sure they are private, while the old portrait on the wall above them is Hitler in a periwig, listening. The claim that ordinary talk can cost lives is carried by a joke rather than a threat; unlike the U.S. 'Wanted! For Murder' poster, no one in the picture is blamed as a killer.

- **Date:** 1940
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** UK Ministry of Information; artist Fougasse (Cyril Kenneth Bird)
- **Region:** [Western and Central Europe](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=western-central-europe)
- **Country:** [United Kingdom](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-kingdom)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Chamberlain Government](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=chamberlain-government)
- **Leader:** [Neville Chamberlain](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=neville-chamberlain)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Themes:** [Security and surveillance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=security-surveillance), [Home front](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=home-front)
- **Event:** [World War II](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-ii)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2004675142/), retrieved September 27, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (UK Crown copyright expired; LOC: no known restrictions on publication in the U.S.) Fougasse (Cyril Kenneth Bird) for the UK Ministry of Information. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, POS - Gr Brit .B57, no. 18.

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Fougasse

"....strictly between these four walls!"

CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES
```

"Fougasse" is the artist's handwritten signature in the top-left corner of the sheet, not a caption; included because it is legible printed/inked text on the object itself.

[← Allen in de Nederlandsche Unie (All in the Netherlands Union)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/allen-in-de-nederlandsche-unie-1940/) ['Dig for Victory' banner across the Royal Exchange, London, used as a Ministry of Information poster site →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dig-for-victory-royal-exchange-banner-1940/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)