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XXIX

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Now that it is certain the German humans will bombard your patient’s town and that his duties will keep hier, we must consider our policy Are we to aie, with consequent pride - or at hatred of the Ger to make hih success is hourly expected) how to produce any virtue This is a serious handicap To be greatly and effectively wicked a man needs soe, or Shylock without self-denial as regards the flesh? But as we cannot supply these qualities ourselves, we can only use the Him a kind of foothold in those men whom, otherwise, we have ement, but, I trust, we shall one day learn to do better

Hatred we can er, and fatigue, makes theuiding this susceptibility into the right channels If conscience resists, muddle him Let him say that he feels hatred not on his own behalf but on that of the woive his own, not other people’s enemies In other words let him consider himself sufficiently identified with the women and children to feel hatred on their behalf, but not sufficiently identified to regard their eneiveness

But hatred is best combined with Fear Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful - horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures It is therefore often the cohtened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear The reat anodyne for shame To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore first defeat his courage

Now this is a ticklish business We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice Whenever we have al so, the Enemy permits a war or an earthquake or soe becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine sha cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing with consequent repentance and humility And in fact, in the last war, thousands of hu their oardice, discovered the whole moral world for the first tiood and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon theuise to which even we cannot blind them There is here a cruel diledirectly into the Eneuide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He peruisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor

This, indeed, is probably one of the Eneerous world - a world in which moral issues really coe is not simply one of the virtues, but the for point, which hest reality A chastity or honesty, or er will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions Pilate was merciful till it becaain byyour man a coward; he may learn too much about himself! There is, of course, always the chance, not of chlorofor Despair This would be a great triumph It would show that he had believed in, and accepted, the Eneiveness of his other sins only because he himself did not fully feel their sinfulness - that in respect of the one vice which he really understands in its full depth of dishonour he cannot seek, nor credit, the Mercy But I fear you have already let hiet too far in the Enereater sin than any of the sins which provoke it

As to the actual technique of temptations to cowardice, not much need be said The main point is that precautions have a tendency to increase fear The precautions publicly enjoined on your patient, however, soon become a matter of routine and this effect disappears What youin hishis duty) the vague idea of all sorts of things he can do or not do, inside the framework of the duty, which seem to make him a little safer Get his ot to stay here and do so-and-so") into a series of ih I very much hope it won’t - I could do B - and if the worst came to the worst, I could always do C") Superstitions, if not recognised as such, can be awakened The point is to keep hi, other than the Enee the Enemy supplies, to fall back on, so that as intended to be a total coh with little unconscious reservations By building up a series of i to the worst" you may produce, at that level of his hich he is not aware of, a determination that the worst shall not come to the worst Then, at the moment of real terror, rush it out into his nerves and et the fatal act done before he knohat you’re about For remember, the act of cowardice is all that h we enjoy it, does us no good,

Your affectionate uncle

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