There are all sorts of possibilities.
In the meantime, I must warn you not to hope too much from a war.
Of course a war is entertaining.
The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers.
But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below?
When I see the temporal suffering 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 torment us--to mock the incessant hunger which, during this present phase of the great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.
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 themselves, by no means in our favour.
We may hope for a good deal of cruelty and unchastity.
But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy, while tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes which they believe to be higher than the self.
I know that the Enemy disapproves many of these causes.
But that is where He is so unfair.
He often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew.
Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime.
Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's party, prepared.
How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging 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 wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.
I know that Scabtree and others have seen in wars a great opportunity for attacks on faith, but I think that view was exaggerated.
The Enemy's human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering 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 am speaking now of diffused suffering over a long period such as the war will 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 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 contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear.
There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy.
He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.
Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy's will.
What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him--the present anxiety and suspense.
It is about this that he is to say
"Thy will be done", and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided.
It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross but only of the things he is afraid of.
Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practise fortitude and patience to them all in advance.
For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it: resignation to present and actual suffering, even where that suffering consists of fear, is far easier and is usually helped by this direct action.
An important spiritual law is here involved.
I have explained that you can weaken his prayers by diverting his attention from the Enemy Himself to his own states of mind about the Enemy.
On the other hand fear becomes easier to master when the patient's mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable state of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind.
One can therefore formulate the general rule; in all activities of mind which favour our cause, encourage the patient to be un-selfconscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favourable to the Enemy bend his mind back on itself.
Let an insult or a woman's body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect
"I am now entering into the state called Anger--or the state called Lust".
Contrariwise let the reflection
"My feelings are now growing more devout, or more charitable" so fix his attention inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see our Enemy or his own neighbours.
As regards his more general attitude to the war, you must not rely too much on those feelings of hatred which the humans are so fond of discussing in Christian, or anti-Christian, periodicals.
In his anguish, the patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, and that is good so far as it goes.