---
title: '''Keep it under your hat!'' Careless Talk Costs Lives'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-it-under-your-hat-careless-talk-1939/
description: A painted steel helmet floats above the large-type line 'Keep it under your hat!', a pun that turns the soldier's helmet into a place to hide information.
section: Collection
---

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3. 'Keep it under your hat!' Careless Talk Costs Lives

[!['Keep it under your hat!' Careless Talk Costs Lives, 1939 UK poster: A painted steel helmet floats above the large-type line](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-it-under-your-hat-careless-talk-1939.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-it-under-your-hat-careless-talk-1939.jpg)

# 'Keep it under your hat!' Careless Talk Costs Lives

A painted steel helmet floats above the large-type line 'Keep it under your hat!', a pun that turns the soldier's helmet into a place to hide information. The tell is the red footer 'Careless talk costs lives', which attaches a death toll to ordinary conversation.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

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

```
"Keep
it
under
your
hat!"

CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

PRINTED FOR H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE BY J. WEINER LTD., LONDON, W.C.1. 51-8451
```

[← Keep It Dark: Careless Talk Costs Lives](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-it-dark-careless-talk-costs-lives-1939/) [打死汪精衛，打死漢奸們！ (Beat Wang Jingwei to death, beat the traitors to death!), Kangweijun Pictorial vol. 1 no. 3 →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/kill-wang-jingwei-kangweijun-pictorial-1939/)

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- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)