XV
My Dear Wormwood,
I had noticed, of course, that the humans were having a lull in their European war - what they naively call "The War"! - and am not surprised that there is a corresponding lull in the patient's anxieties. Do we want to encourage this, or to keep him worried? Tortured fear...
My dear Wormwood,
The most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of "grace" for life, but...
My Dear Wormwood,
It seems to me that you take a great many pages to tell a very simple story. The long and short of it is that you have let the man slip through your fingers. The situation is very grave, and I really see no reason why I should try and shield you from the consequences of your...
XII
My Dear Wormwood,
Obviously you are making excellent progress. My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We...
XI
My Dear Wormwood,
Everything is clearly going very well. I am specially glad to hear that the two new friends have now made him acquainted with their whole set. All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and world-lings who...
X
My Dear Wormwood, I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this even in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his...
IX
My Dear Wormwood, I hope my last letter has convinced you that the trough of dullness or "dryness" through which your patient is going at present will not, of itself, give you his soul, but needs to be properly exploited. What forms the exploitation should...
VIII
My Dear Wormwood, So you "have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away", have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about...
VII
My Dear Wormwood, I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the...
VI
My Dear Wormwood, I am delighted to hear that your patient's age and profession make it possible, but by no means certain, that he will be called up for military service. We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with...