[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sni s —My great regard for
Dr. Rayner, with whom it has been my privilege to be associated in work for the relief of nerve- strained soldiers, makes me diffident in replying to his letter in the Spectator of March 22nd, but to offer no comment would be to appear to accept the view that I had been unfair to the Board of Control in quoting the reply they gave us when he and I waited on them during the War. Neither of us could be said to be ignorant of the law, but the hope was (at any rate, so far as I was concerned) that under the special circumstances that had arisen, the Board would find it possible to abstain from enforcing the law. That it is the law and not the Board that is to be blamed is made evident in another part of my letter of March 8th, in which the view is expressed that what is wanted is that the laws should be so altered as to give the Board a power of discrimination which they do not now legally enjoy, and which did not allow of our receiving an answer more in accord with the needs of the moment. I am informed that what we were anxious to secure at that time has- since been done in Government institutions, where " certifiable" patients have been treated without being " certified."—I am,
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