13 JANUARY 1933, Page 3

Technocracy : Some Questions

It argues no depreciation of the interesting article by Major Yeats-Brown on a later page, or of other admirable studies that have appeared elsewhere in the British Press, to say that it is still very difficult to discover what the technocrats are driving at, and on the understanding of it we so far have, the furore the hew doctrines have created across the Atlantic does no great credit to the stability of American opinion. The technocrats' analysis of the effects on society of the increasing dominance of the machine is impressive, but on the constructive side they have singularly little that is convincing to offer. Their sublime faith in the expert is astonishing, the more so when it is a question of having the world run not by experts hi the art of government, but by experts in bridge-building and factory construction. As for the comprehensive cancel- lation of existing debt and the creation of a new currency in units of energy (an engineer's energy, a lawyer's energy, a doctor's energy), all that requires a far fuller exposition than it has so far received in the British , Press. Technocracy is by no means to be dismissed as fantastic, but its authors have yet to convince the world that it is not fantastic.