This 1915 La Baïonnette cartoon skewers the militarized paranoia that swept France during World War I. Two refined men peer over a ruined hillside and whisper about how “perfect” it once was for a 420-mm gun — the kind of fear-logic that turns ordinary places into imagined battlegrounds. The joke isn’t the woman; it’s how war rewires civilians to see threats everywhere.
A century later, the warning remains the same: fear is a powerful storyteller, and it can redraw a whole landscape long before the fighting begins.
This 1915 La Baïonnette cartoon skewers the militarized paranoia that swept France during World War I. Two refined men peer over a ruined hillside and whisper about how “perfect” it once was for a 420-mm gun — the kind of fear-logic that turns ordinary places into imagined battlegrounds. The joke isn’t the woman; it’s how war rewires civilians to see threats everywhere.
A century later, the warning remains the same: fear is a powerful storyteller, and it can redraw a whole landscape long before the fighting begins.
