At the beginning of World War Two, after stories had started to circulate that the cunning Germans were dropping parachutists dressed as nuns in Holland, a wild fizz of spy mania frothed up in Britain.
After a while, when people realised that if the third Reich was that religious the next airborne assault should have consisted of bishops, bell ringers and choirboys, and it didn’t, things slowly began to settle down. It then became clear that it was just another propaganda ploy by the government to keep everyone wired up and on their toes.
A tale of careless talk
The whole thing was a godsend to cartoonists, but after a while the theme became stale. When the ‘phoney war’ settled in, a longish period when not a lot happened, the spy thing went off the boil. This falling off in enthusiasm did not please Mr Churchill, who was as much concerned about security as I am, and he demanded that the Ministry of Keeping Ordinary People on the Hop come up with something less ridiculous, but interesting enough to stick in the wartime public’s mind.
The nun’s chorus turned out to be a joke, but when the laughter died down the security problem still existed. An enemy you laugh at rather than fear is good for morale, but there is the other face of espionage in wartime. It is the danger of people in the know putting the lives of others in danger by inadvertently disclosing important information over drinks and pillows. A way had to be found to make everyone aware of such carelessness.
Careless talk costs lives
Linking a new campaign with both humour and a serious message, the campaign was a series of drawings all headed with the caption ‘careless talk costs lives!’ The artwork was light and economical and portrayed everyday scenes in wartime, but with an added ingredient. We would see two sailors chatting in a pub, or an officer and his girlfriend having dinner at the Ritz. Other themes were soldiers in conversation on a train, a couple of women munitions workers having a cup of tea, country gents looking over a fence by a sign saying ‘secret!’ and an RAF wing commander with a flowing moustache trying to impress a pretty shop assistant.
Nothing exceptional, except that Hitler would be drawn sitting in the seat behind or reading a newspaper at the next table. The sight of him as a waiter, porter, nurse or farmhand on posters and newspapers all over the British Isles at first made people smile, then think. After a while ‘careless talk costs lives’ slipped into the language, civilians and servicemen did become aware of the dangers of loose comment and that is what this long preamble to this chapter is all about!
The spy in the pub
We still have spies – the big-time international agents who betray their country, the ones who ferret out commercial secrets, and right down at the bottom of the list, the listening burglar and his mate in the pub. Don’t however allow his humble position in the league to fool you, because if he is nabbed, instead of several life sentences he has a one in eight chance of just being cautioned.
That statistic can’t help but make housebreakers feel cocky, and if he can benefit from careless talk it saves him a lot of time and effort. So without becoming paranoid please remember, when in conversation engage the brain before the tongue!
I appreciate that I am talking from experience, while you are at the learning stage, so take it easy and enjoy the Sunday dinner without considering where an individual pea comes from. By that I mean you should concentrate on situations, not detail! The moment a situation takes you over – the music in a supermarket, chatter in a pub, the smells in a restaurant or foreign language spoken on your holiday – it will be then that the associated security precautions that I have mentioned will pop up in your mind like daisies on a newly mown lawn!