Protect His Future... Watch Your Tongue (1943), Earl Christy's "Boy" security poster

Protect his future... watch your tongue is a 1943 War Department security poster, printed with the label W.D., A.G.O., "Boy" Security Poster and signed Earl Christy. The sheet pairs a painted portrait of a smiling blond toddler in striped overalls with the slogan "SILENCE MEANS SECURITY," set between stars (NAID 513598).

A child instead of a spy

Some security sheets on this site show the enemy watching. This one shows no enemy at all. The archive describes a painted portrait of a smiling blond toddler in striped overalls on a dark ground, and the text asks the viewer to stay quiet for his sake.

Protect his future

... watch your tongue

★ SILENCE MEANS SECURITY ★

[signature:] Earl Christy

[...]

[imprint:] W.D., A.G.O., "Boy" Security Poster

A campaign filed by nickname

The imprint names the War Department's Adjutant General's Office and gives the sheet a nickname, "Boy." The War Department labeled other security posters the same way: the "Owl" security poster of 1943 and the "WAAC" poster of 1942 both share this sheet's slogan, Silence means security, under a different picture.

The archive tags fear appeal and glittering generalities. Its purpose field reads "Warn or inform," and the audience is "Domestic public."

What the child is asked to carry

The argument runs through feeling. The phrase "his future" is never defined; the child may be a son, a grandson, or every American child. Careless talk is said to threaten it, but the sheet does not say what talk, to whom, or how. The appeal works because no reader wants to be the one who hurt a child.

A request for discretion about ship sailings and troop movements is reasonable in a war, and nothing here orders anyone to do anything. Still, a poster that ties any loose word to a child's future, without naming the kind of word, asks readers to police their own ordinary talk with no line drawn around what must stay unsaid.

Two Office of War Information sheets tie loose talk to a serviceman's life: This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much and A Careless Word... Another Cross. Glenn Grohe's He's Watching You shows the enemy that this sheet leaves out.