Recent disputes in the N.H.S. are highlighting a number of problems which have been swept under various carpets of indifference, denial or muddle for a long time. One of these is the number and quality of recruits coming into psychiatry and completing their training. Like almost everything else in Britain, it gets worse as you go further from the London and the South-East area—at least until Hadrian’s Wall is reached. And in this, as in many other respects, psychiatry seems to illustrate the inherent difficulties of the N.H.S. in a particularly striking way.