" THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA"
Ste,—I much enjoyed Mr. Basil Wright's perceptive review of this play. As far as I know, he is the first critic to point out that by allowing Colenso, the self-complacent laboratory worker with a scorn for the clinicism, to place himself on a pedestal of superiority. Shaw made him as ridiculous as the others. But I was rather sur- prised at his expressed belief that " their days are now more surely numbered. The second world war has made State medical service a near and practical possibility." Now, apart from the fatuous B. B. all the doctors. Shaw pillories are sine ere exponents of the one-track mind ; they could have had no thought of personal gain by treating the penniless artist Dubedat. It has yet to be proved that making medicine a branch of the Civil Service will cure that one-track mind.
Overheard on leaving the theatre: "Shaw cribbed all this from Cronin! "—Faithfully yours, W. LANGDON-BROWN. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge..
P.S.—If you had not pronounced the S.P.C.E. defunct, it would have had a case against the usually impeccable Mr. Harold Nicolson for using alibi "in a Pickwickian sense " as equivalent to defence. " Oh, Samival, Samival."
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