This 1915 La Baïonnette cartoon by Emmanuel Barcet 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 by Emmanuel Barcet 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.
