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MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

It is a little bit disappointing to expect a detailed report on your work and to receive instead such a vague rhapsody as your last letter You say you are "delirious with joy" because the European humans have started another of their wars I see very hat has happened to you You are not delirious; you are only drunk Reading between the lines in your very unbalanced account of the patient’s sleepless night, I can reconstruct your state of mind fairly accurately For the first time in your career you have tasted that hich is the reward of all our labours - the anguish and bewilderone to your head I can hardly bla shoulders Did the patient respond to some of your terror-pictures of the future? Did you work in solances at the happy past? - some fine thrills in the pit of his stomach, were there? You played your violin prettily did you? Well, well, it’s all very natural But do remember, Wormwood, that duty coence on your part leads to the ulti for that draught of which you are now soyour first sip If, on the other hand, by steady and cool-headed application here and now you can finally secure his soul, he will then be yours forever - a bri chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please So do not allow any temporary excite faith and preventing the formation of virtues Give me without fail in your next letter a full account of the patient’s reactions to the war, so that we can consider whether you are likely to dohim an extreme patriot or an ardent pacifist There are all sorts of possibilities In the meantime, I must warn you not to hope tooThe iiti workers But what pering souls to Our Father Below? When I see the te of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied the rest It is worse than not to have tasted it at all The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalise and tor this present phase of the great conflict, His blockade is ad Let us therefore think rather how to use, than how to enjoy, this European war For it has certain tendencies inherent in it which are, in theood deal of cruelty and unchastity But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Eneo so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted froher than the self I know that the Enemy disapproves many of these causes But that is where He is so unfair He often iven their lives for causes He thinks bad on the ood and were following the best they knew Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartiht be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy’s party, prepared Howhomes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained the the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition! And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless In warti to live forever

I know that Scabtree and others have seen in wars a great opportunity for attacks on faith, but I think that vieas exaggerated The Enemy’s hu is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying I a period such as the ill produce Of course, at the precise moment of terror, bereavement, or physical pain, you may catch your man when his reason is temporarily suspended But even then, if he applies to Enemy headquarters, I have found that the post is nearly always defended,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE