Parlano di pace e nascondono il pugnale! (They Talk of Peace and Hide the Dagger!)

A grinning, stooped soldier in a field-grey uniform holds out a sheet marked 'Chiacchiere di pace' (peace chatter) while a dagger is hidden behind his back; the text calls the enemy 'ipocriti ladroni d'Austria e di Germania' and says true peace will come only from 'our victory'. The caricature and the label 'hypocrite thieves' do the naming, and 'the triumph of free peoples' is asserted without terms.

Date: 1918
Period: First World War
Made by: Italian wartime home-front propaganda (sponsor not named on the sheet); artist Borilli; printed by Mondadori, Verona-Ostiglia
Region: Western and Central Europe
Country: Kingdom of Italy
Medium: Poster
Issuer type: Mixed
Regime: Orlando Government
Leader: Vittorio Emanuele Orlando
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Persuade or win support
Themes: War and the military, Home front
Event: World War I
Techniques: Name-calling Glittering generalities
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: Plakatmuseum Wien, Sammlung Eybl (via Wikimedia Commons), retrieved September 29, 2026
Rights: Public domain (poster published in Italy in 1918, before 1931); Commons PD-old tag; photo CC BY-SA 4.0
Sammlung Eybl, Plakatmuseum Wien / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 (photograph by A. Erhardt); poster by Borilli, 1918.

Text on the object

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

Parlano di pace e
nascondono il pugnale!

[on the sheet the figure holds] CHIACCHIERE
DI
PACE

Vi conosciamo, ipocriti ladroni d'Austria e di Germania!
Ora che vi teniamo alla gola, volete che allentiamo la stretta per avere
il tempo di darci la pugnalata nella schiena!
NO! NOI NON ALLENTIAMO!!
La pace vera, la pace che compenserà i nostri sacrifici, che vendicherà
i nostri morti, che redimerà le nostre terre, che assicurerà il trionfo
dei popoli liberi,
verrà dalla NOSTRA VITTORIA!

[signature, lower right] Borilli
[imprint, lower left] Soc. An. A. Mondadori - Verona - Ostiglia

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

They talk of peace and
hide the dagger!

[on the sheet the figure holds] PEACE
CHATTER

We know you, hypocritical thieves of Austria and of Germany!
Now that we hold you by the throat, you want us to loosen our grip so as to have
the time to stab us in the back!
NO! WE WILL NOT LOOSEN!!
The true peace, the peace that will compensate our sacrifices, that will avenge
our dead, that will redeem our lands, that will secure the triumph
of free peoples,
will come from OUR VICTORY!

Red and black display type over a cream sheet; the imprint line at lower left is small.