February 4, 2017

How mistakenly now that all is lost you come whimpering to ask me whether the terms of affection in which I address you meant nothing from the beginning. … Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on.

Letter #31 Uh oh – Wormwood is in really big trouble     My dear, my very dear, Wormwood, my poppet, my pigsnie, How mistakenly now that all is lost you come whimpering to ask me whether the terms of affection in which I address you meant nothing from the beginning. … Love you? Why, yes.

I sometimes wonder whether you think you have been sent into the world for your own amusement.

I sometimes wonder whether you think you have been sent into the world for your own amusement.

Now this is a ticklish business. We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. … There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

Now this is a ticklish business. We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. … There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

Do you not know that bombs kill men? Or do you not realise that the patient’s death, at this moment, is precisely what we want to avoid? … This is so obvious that I am ashamed to write it.