---
title: 'Careless Talk Costs Lives (Fougasse: "...but of course it mustn''t go any further!")'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-careless-talk-costs-lives-fougasse-train-1939/
description: Two men talk face to face in a railway carriage while two bodies in nets above the compartment fall in a red-bordered cartoon.
section: Collection
---

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3. Careless Talk Costs Lives

[![Careless Talk Costs Lives, 1939 UK poster: Two men talk face to face in a railway carriage while two bodies in nets above](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-careless-talk-costs-lives-fougasse-train-1939.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-careless-talk-costs-lives-fougasse-train-1939.jpg)

# Careless Talk Costs Lives (Fougasse: "...but of course it mustn't go any further!")

Two men talk face to face in a railway carriage while two bodies in nets above the compartment fall in a red-bordered cartoon. The caption in the speaker's voice, '...but of course it mustn't go any further!', sits above the slogan 'Careless Talk Costs Lives'. The tell for fear-appeal is the pairing of the casualties with a single prescribed remedy, keeping quiet.

## 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

```
Fougasse

"..... but of course it mustn't go any further!"

CARELESS TALK
COSTS LIVES
```

[← Careful Packing Aids Victory](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-careful-packing-aids-victory-1939/) [Careless Talk Costs Lives: "Strictly between you and me...." (Fougasse) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-careless-talk-costs-lives-strictly-between-1939/)

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- [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.
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