Vintage Poster Archives
Somebody Talked 1940s | Canada WW2 Propaganda Poster
Somebody Talked 1940s | Canada WW2 Propaganda Poster
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A merchant vessel burns on a near-black sea. The explosion rises in crimson and orange flame, a vast column of smoke towers through the upper composition, and across it, in hand-lettered cream cursive set at a diagonal: 'Somebody talked!' Below, a cream band carries the campaign title in heavy teal-green block letters: THE WALLS HAVE EARS. The visual sequence is direct and the message deliberate.
Issued by the Wartime Information Board in Ottawa and printed in Canada, the design credits the Walls Have Ears Organization, a British careless-talk security campaign adapted by the Canadian government from the summer of 1940 onward. This is catalogue number AG-20 in the numbered WIB series. The campaign appeared alongside related variants AG-18 and AG-19, distributed to schools, railway stations, factories, and government offices across Canada to warn civilians and workers against discussing ship movements and sensitive wartime information in public settings.
The approach here is sharply different from the wit of Fougasse's British 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' cartoons: where Fougasse used humour, the Canadian poster uses consequence. The sinking ship is not implied, it is shown, burning, in the dark. The two-register typography, combining informal cursive script with heavy slab display lettering, reflects the North American wartime vernacular of the period, bridging the illustrated and the declarative in a single composition.
Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using archival pigment inks. A document of Canadian home-front graphic communication at its most direct.
