“A Prophet Hath ..."

Cue (NZERS), Issue 10, 31 October 1944, Page 4

“A Prophet Hath . .."

U YX7AR has accidentally assigned to a New : Zealander, Rewi ' ; VV Alley, a role among the people of China which may yet rank as one of the great human adventures of our time. Whereas T. E. Lawrence brought to the Arabs the destructive technique of guerrilla war, Alley has brought to China the constructive technique of guerrilla industry.” In such words, in his book The Battle for Asia, the New York -Tribune foreign corespondent, Edgar Snow, has written an inspiring panegyric of the powerful influence Alley has exerted upon a China at war with a. ruthless foe.

NAMED after a Maori .chief, Rewi Te Manipoto, Rewi Alley is the son of Irish and English pioneers in NZ. Alley’s father, a freehold farmerand schoolmaster, fostered some of the progressive social legislation of NZ and preached the factory-farm cause in agriculture. With his father’s quick resentment of social waste and stupidity, Rewi’s heritage of Irish blood, the severe training of an untamed country, and a personal experience of the last war which settled nothing, all contributed to the making of a fit citizen of a united world. They created in him a rare personality, combination of spiritual strength and practical sense.

Nobody hates war more than Alley. 'He was still at school when the last war began, but he followed his brothers into the ranks of an NZ regiment. His eldest brother was killed. Rewi >was twice gassed, and near the end of the war severely wounded. He was decorated for. gallantry in action by the Prince of Wales. But disillusioned and dee-ply aware of war's waste and stupidity, he arrived in Shanghai to work as a factory inspector. A born, adventurer, Alley was to be found far up in Inner Mongolia in the arid June of 1929. He was a strangely out-of-place figure. He was only of

medium height, but • had tremendous rugged arms and . legs. ‘ When he stood with = those giant’s legs apart in characteristic attitude, he • seemed somehow ' rooted to ■ the- earth. With his sky-blue eyes, up-standing crop of reddish hair and hawklike English nose, Alley seemed the perfect image of a foreign devil to frighten the wits out of Chinese children. Yet he is probably ,loved by more of them ~thaqr any other foreigner.

WHILE he . /foiled among : the Chinese, Alley .recognised that there, however . blind and groping at times, was a rapidly awakening people, moving toward freedom,, and with something of great value to the world if allowed to work cut its own destiny. An extremely concrete thinker, he built his faith on the children and plain people who do all the work in China but are seldom met as human beings by foreigners. A democratic foundation was laid for China’s wartime industry: ■ ■ Industrial co-operatives offered the possibility of creating a new kind of society in the midst of war. The outlook for China would have been far more dismal, after the Japs tightened . their sea blockade, had it ~ not been for the remarkable

growth of, Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, or the Work-Together Movement, In the technique of Indusco—or CIC, as it. was also known China found the principle of industrial defence for a weak but large country against the menace from the air. It was simply this: that industry centred in crowded cities could not be efficiently or safely operated under continuous bombardment. It must, therefore, be evacuated and decentralised in small units spread over wide areas in such a manner as to rob the bomber of its only decisive behind-the-lines objectivethe immobilisation of concentrations of machines and skilled operatives.

Alley was conceived to be the only man in China capable of creating the necessary organisation. Sceptics and defeatists called it a crackpot idea, and the plan might have been interred along with other amateur advice had it not been ardently sponsored,-and Rewi Alley with it, by the British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr.

* * * * IN 1938, when Alley was appointed chief technical adviser to the organisation, it did not own a single factory, lathe or even chisel. Alley was its only staff. The obstacles seemed insuperable, but the sceptics are now eating their words for to-day Ai Li — the Chinese name for Alley, meaning Lover of Dawn —is identified with renewed hope and a future for thousands of derelicts of war.

, Indusco set a record in China for the shortest distance between paper planning and action—two years. It can stand as a monument to a great nation’s courage, ingenuity and endurance. Early in October, 1940, there were 2,300 vestpocket factories spread across'' 16 provinces and under the technical direction of 70 branch headquarters. The Indusco Line extended from guerrilla territory, behind enemy posi- ’ tions, , deep into China, and from the Mongolian Plateau to the highlands of Yunnan. Over 50 types of industries were represented. Alley was only the prime mover who started the wheels. But it was his prosaic mottoes and superhuman energy that prevailed. The magnitude of his effort can best be gleaned from the record of his own journeyings. In the first two years he travelled over 18,000 miles—a considerable achievement on the roads and trails of wartime China. Pedalling bicycles, hitch-hiking on army trucks, riding an ambulance or horse into combat zones, but more often trudging along on his own tireless legs, Alley forged in the best of the CIC staff an almost religious will to carry the message of industry and working-together into the farthest corner of the country. Among nick-names that he earned was that of The Nine Lived, because nine times he escaped death when buses and trucks in which he rode overturned ; or were wrecked on dangerous roads. A benign angel seemed to guard this moving target. Twice bombs scored direct hits on dugouts in which he sought refuge. Once a 2oolb. bomb fell in the entrance to a cave in which Alley and other key men were standing. Lucky it wasn tan Indusco product, Alley observed, or it wouldn't have been a dud! His abnormal nose has also - won for Alley the. name of Tall Nose. He was once riding ill an ancient bus, when a bearded elder in front spoke to a youth seated alongside ■ Chinese make better airmen than foreigners because . they . cam see on all sides. Just , take a look at the Tall Nose behind us. How can he see round an obstacle like that?'. In Alley s case his nose has proved no handicap. ’

R EWI'S biggest thrill was told with a chuckle: One winter morning, leaving a tiny village on the edge of Mongolia, we stood as a long camel caravan came out of the mist. We were amazed to see the first camel carrying the huge silk banner of Indusco, and our red triangle emblazoned 'on the boxes of guerrilla products. • We cheered those camels as they snorted .past into the dawn, realising we were all part of something that covered a whole nation. Few Chinese have seen as much of China at- war as Alley has done. His journeys took him through spots infested with bubonic plague, relapsing fever and other epidemics, to which he was not always immune. He caught dengue fever and malaria. Somehow he came out of it as übiquitous and energetic as ever. Alley never let any personal discomfort, any insult or affront, interfere with his purpose or vision. Once, from some god-forsaken hole, between air-raids, he wrote: It's not bad here except for the rats. They keep carrying off my soap, shoes, clothes and papers. Another time he walked back hundreds of miles across mountain trails where few Chinese dare go unaccompanied by armed escort. There was not a word about his hardships, except that he liked his maize and buttered tea, but an outburst of enthusiasm about the gold in the stream, the highland sheep and the Living Buddha whom he had won over to co-operative industry.>

Explaining this incredible achievement,. Alley told how the Tibetans, who still spin their wool with their hands in the ancient Egyptian manner, also followed to-day in Italy, had never seen a modern spinning wheel. They were so enthralled by the new wheel that Alley demonstrated, that the Living Buddha admitted his boredom and the wish to do something useful. So he was made head of the first Indusco depot in the Sungp’an Valley. But the thing that really converted the Tibetans was Alley's night ride across f narrow mountain tracks with the wild horsemen there. He proved his ability to take it in the local mannerwhich consisted, of swilling down their fiery liquor, passed from horse to horse at the gallop!

And Alley himself,' who recently visited NZ for a well-earned rest, draws the conclusion: It isn’t what we have done, but what can yet be accomplished. Our goal is 30,000 co-operative factories. When we reach it the Japanese will then roll up their fancy little swords in their bedding mats and take themselves back, home and begin copying China again. •

This is the first of a series -of articles dealing with individual New Zealanders who are responsible for some remarkable but little-known exploits in out-of-the-way corners of the world. Rewi Alley’s work in China, briefly set out in these pages, isadmirably portrayed in the book The Battle for Asia by Edgar • Snow, from which we have quoted liberally.