LYTTELTON TO SHANTAN?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 399, 14 February 1947, Page 6

LYTTELTON TO SHANTAN?

Sheep Saga with a Sequel

(Written for "The Listener" by

JAMES

BERTRAM

: HAT, would most Listener . \X/ readers say, has been the ; best story that has ever appeared in this journal? It might be interesting to take a poll. But I know I should plump solidly for an article that came out in these pages just two years ago-on February 16, 1945. It was called "Lyttelton to Lhasa — the Story of a Mob of Sheep." That article gave the amazing history of 150 New Zealand Corriedales, Mer‘inos, Romneys and Lincolns that left these shores in the middle of one war, got caught in the beginnings of another, and finally ended up on the roof of the world. It was the sort of story that couldn’t have been invented; it had to be true. The sheep, as many readers will remember, had been ordered by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture on the instigation of Rewi Alley of the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives-they were intended to improve the breed and the fleece of Indusco flocks in Kansu, in Northwest China. With the help of ".. T. Alley of Wellington, Messrs. Wright Stephenson & Co. filled the order with that special loving care that is reserved for really unusual enterprises. In December 1941, shrouded in wartime secrecy, the sheep left Lyttelton. A few days later, Japan struck at Pearl Harbour. Troubled Odyssey The rest of the story should be fam-iliar-it is a theme for a modern New Zealand epic that I commend to any of our younger poets. Re-routed from Rangoon when the Burma Road fell to the

advancing Japanese, the sheep were finally landed in Calcutta. The only remaining route into China was over the old pack-trails that crossed the ice-bound passes to Tibet. Along these trails the little flock vanished from sight, heading for the eternal snows. For two years they were "off the map." Then in 1944 they were located by two passing Americans on the frozen plateau well east of Lhasa-stranded in a position from which they could not easily

be moved, and shut off by an impenetrable mountain barrier from the rivervalleys and oases of Kansu where they had long been eagerly awaited. The Americans .reported that the Tibetan shepherds were crossing their own stock with these aristocratic visitors from the islands of the South, and that they were "exciting great interest." So, as Rewi Alley wrote back to his brother in Wellington late in 1944, "it seems they have come to the end of their trail. They will havetheir effect on the sheep of Central Tibet, but not on those of the province of Kansu for which they were intended." Heroic Failure That, in brief, is the story that was featured in The Listener just-two years ago. And the reason why I personally would give this article top marks in New Zealand journalism is not just that it was a scoop-as it undeniably was-nor becatise it was exceptionally. finely told; but because it had two rather special marks of distinction. E In the first place, the article itself and the editorial comment upon it showed that rare quality of imagination that picks out a really significant story from routine news. Here was drama of a kind that townsmen and countrymen alike could appreciate. The motive was of universal interest: help from a little country to a big one in distress (though fighting gamely on our behalf), help of a kind that only this little country could give. And it was a drama with an all-New Zealand cast-not least, the island-bred sheep to which this country, like England in those dimly-apprehended

centuries that saw her first rise to powé: in Europe, has owed so much. The human principals, too, were good New Zealanders at home or abroad-men who built things with their hands and with the patient skill of the stock-breeder, or social pioneers of the type of Rewi Alley, who is so big a mar. that it is perhaps impossible that he should be. appreciated at his true worth in his own generation. The second thing that was striking ebout that Listener story was that though it recorded a failure, it didn’t end on a note of negation. With a sure instinct for human values, the writer finished his article with a long quotatiofrom a letter written by Rewi Alley to his brother, but addressed through him to all New Zealand farmers-a letter that seems to me to have something of the quality of Abraham Lincoln’s correspondence in its casual, wise-cracking manner and quict insistence on the fundamental truths by which men live. 1 can’t do better than reproduce it here. "Kansu is the province we must do something to help with better sheep. Those here clip about 316. of poor woo! a year. Add 1 or 2Ib. to this fleece, and better livelihood comes to a great number of people... . The last time the (New Zealand) sheep were sent, the Ministry of Lands sent the money for purchase. My proposal now is that we do the same thing again, but entirely as a social thing apart trom Government aid. To do this money for purchase and sending would have to be raised abroad... . "It would de the average New Zealand farmer good if he put a bet on Kansu sheep and their betterment, at the same time he puts his bets on the tote at Riccarton. A sporting chance. Would the sheep get through, would they be cared for, would they stand this. climate? Would they help a lot of Chinese farmers to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? "Sure, the whole thing is a gamble. But it is a gamble that would be good for us here and for people in New Zealand to play, for the good of their own souls. Here we should never cease trying to abolish this poverty which-if it stays ~-will be the breeding ground of so many new wars, so much human. distress. There, you have to realise that there are other countries in the world besides New Zealand and the Commonwealth." Sheep Breeders Respond That was written two years ago, in the last months of a confused and longdrawn struggle in the Pacific, when any attempt to send stock overseas frora these islands seemed even more fantastically difficult than in 1941, But now at last it is possible to record the not unworthy sequel. Rewi Alley’s words did not all fall upon stony ground. The same New Zealand breeders and the stud-stock firm who had helped gather the first shipment of sheep for Kansu, stirred by that Listener article, made voluntary offers to replace the sheep that had gone astray; Wr ght, Stephenson’s in 1945 set aside a sum of £250 to open the kitty for a second shipment, if that should ever become possible. And so the matter rested for more than a year. The real trouble, of course, was shipping and transport. It was easy

enough to: assembic sheep at a New Zealand port; but how were they to be got to Alley’s Bailie School for Industrial Co-operatives, with its: experimental farm at Shantan, Kansu — more than 2;000 miles inland . from ‘the China coast? Though Kansu itself, a poor under-populated province with some of the best Uupland sheep country in China, was not directly affectad by the post-war unrest and _ fighting, many of the intervening provinces be-

tween Kansu and Shanghai most certainly were. The problem got no easier as the months passed. UNRRA Lends a Hand Then in 1946 it became known that the Department of Agriculture in New Zealand was assisting UNRRA in a major relief project to purchase and despatch pedigree stock to China. At first cnly cattle were mentioned; later, the order was widened to include 1,000 pedigree sheep. Everything moved very slowly, since experts had to visit China and report back on the possibilities; but at ‘last it was arranged that the stock from New Zealand should be picked up in Lyttelton and Auckland by a special UNRRA stock ship, the Victory, in February, 1947. a Meantime, Alley had been busy at his end. In 1946 an impressive Chinese document reached Wellington, stamped with the Great Seal of the Provincial Government of Kansu. Taken to the Chinese Consulate-General for translation, it proved to be a letter welcoming the gift of New Zealand stud sheep to the Bailie School at Shantan, and recommending that they be turned over in New Zealand as a gift to UNRRA, which would then cover the.r transport to China and pass them on to the authorities there. At last the .stage of action was reached. The breeders, with ready generosity, provided the foundation flock of ewes and rams; and the gift sheepall Corriedales, as more confidence was felt about this breed’s suitability for north China than any other’s-are now being assembled in Lyttelton to go aboard the Lindenwood Victory _ this month. Though not so large in numbers (the gift flock numbers 50 sheep) nor so fully representative in’ breéd as their predecessors, they are still worthy ambassadors of goodwill from the farmers of New Zealand to the peasant-farmers of Northwest China. The whole shipment of stock will be under, the care of a tra’ned crew and staff, and with them will be travelling experts from the Department of Agriculture, and a young Chinese student , of animal: husbandry who has recently qualified at Massey College. By Plane to Shantan? There is an important pendant, however, to this part of the story. These 50 stud sheep for Rewi Alley represent a gift from New Zealand breeders to a fellow-countryman ina distant land. UNRRA is covering the cost of the sea voyage-an invaluable contribution that no private agency could make. But the sheep still have to get from Shanghai to Shantan-an overland journey of more than 2,000 miles by(river, rail and

road-a journey whose considerable normal hazards are intensified by the present unsettled state of the country. Rewi Alley himself has recommended that the most d-rect, the safest, and probabiy the most economical method of getting the sheep from. Shanghai to Kansu would be to charter a special plane--50 sheep make one good plane load-and fly them in. He even knows a pilot who could land them outside the walls of Shantan, right beside the Indusco farm! Unfortunately the Bailie School has no funds to spare for special transport; and the cost of a plane would be considerable. It is estimated at C.N. $20,000,000-about N.Z. £1,500. A Public Appeal So now the appeal goes over to CORSO, whch is already planning to send help to the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, and is at present recruiting a doctor, a nurse and technical’ experts to serve for two years with the Bailie School in Shantan. In its general China Relief Fund CORSO has a special account for Chinese Industrial Co-opera-tives; and it is making an appeal this month for a Chinege Transport Fund to, help out with Rewi Alley’s sheep. Any contributions marked "Rewi Alley Sheep Fund" and sent to CORSO, Box 11, Government Buildings Post Office, Wellington, will be set as:de for that particular purpose. When so many difficulties have been surmounted, and now that a "replacement draft" of stud sheep for Shantan has been provided as a free gift by a few generous individuals, it doesn’t seem asking too much of the general New

Zealand public-farmers, in particular -to suggest that they m’ght make up the sum required, For all New Zealand will be watching the progress of, the Lindenwood Victory with her Chinabound pedigree cargo; and there will be a very special interest in the fate of the 50 Corriedales consigned to Rewi Alley at Shantan. Once more (just five years after the first one) a foundat.on. flock «of -New Zealand stud sheep is leaving Lyttelton for Kansu. This time, we may reasonably hope, they will never see the’ gionastery" ‘towers of Lhasa. "But it) Would be nice to know. that théy had. only seven hours’ flying time ahead, of them, from Shanghai to the end of their a ney. That is the way it should be. a twentieth-century world. And that is the way. it will be, if New Zealanders are prepared to see this thing through.

The story ot the sheep for China vill be told briefly by James Bertram in person from all National stations at 7.6 p.m..on Thursday, February. 13,