Dear Captain Wormwood... II
A mentoring programme.
Dear Captain Wormwood,
As my nephew I feel I have a responsibility to maintain the standards within our mission. I have read your recent reports and some of the reports on you and your activities, and I must counsel that you are in a precarious position.
Recently the Chief of Staff made a decision, on the spot, and cascaded it to the appropriate parties, and what is most alarming is that he did not give this direction explicitly - those supporting him read what needed to happen, and then they did it.
You are young and it is accepted that will take a little time for you to learn how to handle these situations. I know you thought you were helping by offering 'other suggestions', but I must say you have only shown your immaturity and lack of understanding.
Our Father below does indeed demand inaction, and variety of thought can at times be a mechanism to achieve that. But you have failed to understand how these subtleties interact. You see, the Enemy quite often values variety of thought. He has compassion for 'mulling things over'. Not-doing-anything might be mistaken for this, and vice versa.
What you must do, dear Nephew, is ensure that any hesitation is taken out of fear, not out of demands for thoughtfulness. Fear for safety, fear of accountability or blame, these are some of our best tools. Hesitation to consider that which needs consideration is virtuous in the eyes of the Enemy. It is these very topics which our Father below wants decisiveness in, or better still, and it will take some time to influence your department, completely ignoring the important matters.
If you had raised trivial concerns, and fanned the flames of fear, or pedantry, you would have made some progress.
As it is, this incident appeared 'efficient', and I'm not using that word in the way we normally use it, as a means of corrupting matters.
Your next assignments will deal with an upcoming ammunition review. You did a good job raising the price tag on installing those shelves - playing the stakeholder in some “minor infrastructure upgrades” was a good move! This, however, will be different. The Enemy values ammunition, so while raising the cost of it does cause Him problems, He recognises it as of ultimate importance, and so will want to cut corners everywhere else first. He will naturally prioritise important matters like ammunition.
The way to tackle this, is to focus on the virtues of 'simulation'. Your predecessor executed this masterfully. He managed to get them to purchase a sophisticated and expensive simulator. It had some exquisite features: complicating training inputs of what amount to simple messages, and even creating a virtual notepad in the simulated environment! He would have done a good job had he not overegged it. Students rallied during the after action reviews and caused some embarrassment to the management. He was 'reassigned' once Our Father Below realised that it's poor performance was too extreme and it was disenchanting the students entirely.
You have the tricky task of perpetuating the awfulness of it, while convincing them that it is superior to any of that precious High Explosive. This is your moment to shine. I have some of my agents watching you, and I expect great things.
Yours in vexed patience,
General Screwtape
