family circle'. Now, suddenly, she saw his concepts in another perspective. 'It seems to me,' she told Martha, 'that Esperanto is only a school in which future Baha'is educate themselves. The Baha'i Movement is a step forward. It is larger.'
On the face of it, this was quite a startling statement. For ZamenhoPs own daughter to say that something else was larger than Esperanto, that the cause to which her father had devoted his life was 'only a school' no doubt deeply shocked many Esperantists and may even have seemed treasonous.
Yet the creator of Esperanto had never regarded the Esperanto movement as an end in itself, but rather as a means to educate people about unity. Zamenhof himself had believed that the idea of a neutral language could never succeed without a world religion. Lidia's words to Martha Root seemed to echo what Ludwik Zamenhof had told the Universal Congress of Esperanto in 1907: 'Gradually Esperantoland will become a school for the future brotherhood of mankind.'
The Esperantists learned of Lidia's remark almost immediately, for Martha Root quoted it in an article she wrote about the unveiling ceremony. The newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto published an excerpt in its 4 June edition, calling attention to the statement as remarkable but removing the word 'only' - perhaps to soften the effect on the Esperantists.
Ludwik Zamenhofs daughter saw no contradiction or conflict of loyalties in accepting the Baha'1 Faith. Its essential teachings were not in conflict with Zamenhof s ideas, but seemed to confirm them and expand them. Here were the concepts ofZamenhofs Homaranismo- one God as the unknowable Creator of all, one mankind to live in peace as one great human family, the agreement of the essential teachings of the Great Teachers of the past, accord between science and religion, a universal auxiliary language.
But if the principles were the same, why accept the Baha'f Faith over Homaranismo? Lidia's personal admiration for or attraction to Martha Root was not enough to explain it. Ludwik Zamenhof had never claimed to found a religion, but the Baha'f teachings, Lidia came to believe, carried the power of divine inspiration. 'In the Teaching of Baha'u'llah', Lidia explained many years later, 'I found the universality which only the truly God-given teaching can give to searching mankind. That is why it attracted me at the beginning.' And between Esperanto and her new-found Faith, Lidia perceived a fundamental spiritual bond. She became, in her own words, 'profoundly convinced' that 'Esperanto was created directly under the influence of Baha'u'llah, although the author of the language did not know it'.
Lidia did not feel that becoming a Baha'i affected her Jewishness, for, to her, being aJew was a racial or ethnic matter, not a religious one.
The idea of accepting any religion proved more of an obstacle for Lidia. 'I myself was as if in darkness', she recalled of this early period, in a letter written many years later, 'and only now do I see how shadowy and unhappy was that darkness and how bright are the rays of the Light, the source of all life and truth.'
'After Martha's departure I was left alone', Lidia wrote. 'From time to time her letters, full of love, stimulated me again. Besides this, however, there was no one by my side to remind me of God when I was forgetting Him and to uphold my spirit when it was sinking into indifference. But there was also no one to become a test to me and to let me see a face which the Spirit did not yet brighten with the same light I saw in my spiritual mother. My spiritual interest was as a sea-tide - coming and going, coming and going. Sometimes it would be so low that as far as I can recount, even under the surgeon's knife I did not turn to God. But when the tide was coming on, each time its waves covered a larger surface of my soul. I began to try to pray to God, in Whom I had not believed for many years.
'One desire finally crystallized in me: I wanted to go to Haifa.'
No doubt during Martha's stay in Warsaw she told Lidia about her pilgrimage to the Baha'f holy shrines in Haifa, Palestine, and encouraged her to make a pilgrimage herself. Lidia had become a Baha'f too late to meet 'Abdu'1-Baha, who had died in 1921. The leadership of the Baha'f community had passed to his grandson Shoghi Rabbani, known as Shoghi Effendi, whom 'Abdu'1-Baha had named in his will as Guardian of the Baha'i Faith. Because of the unstable and often dangerous conditions in Palestine, it was necessary to get Shoghi Effendi's approval before making the joumey of pilgrimage, so, Lidia later wrote, 'my spiritual mother wrote to the Guardian asking for permission'.
To Lidia's disappointment, Shoghi Effendi answered that she should wait.
Lidia saw Martha Root again in August at the Eighteenth Universal Esperanto Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland. For this 'Congress of Joy' the weather in Scotland was warm and pleasant; the Scotsman reported that Edinburgh had never seen so much sunshine in one week. The most crowded place in the city was the railway station: it was August Bank Holiday, and people streamed out of town for the long weekend. The city gave the Esperantists free use of the streetcars and the conductors greeted the visitors in Esperanto.
Two Baha'f meetings were held at the congress, which took place in the halls of the United Free Church of Scotland, where in 1913 'Abdu'1-Baha had once given a public talk. Dr Immanuel Olsvanger, a Polish Jew who was a leader of the Zionist movement in Britain, because we feel that it is in our power to continue our life on another plane.'
Unfortunately, Martha had chosen the wrong Esperanto word to translate 'plane' so that her statement came out: 'we feel that it is in our power to continue our life on another planet'. When the talk was published as a booklet, it was duly reviewed in a German Esperanto magazine by Amold Behrendt, a prominent German Esperantist who was to play an ignominious role in the movement during the years ahead. He took exception in his review, saying, 'I confess: I also . . . believe in the life of the spirit after death. But my belief is not the same as is apparently the belief of the author ... I don't believe that our spirit will continue to live on another planet . . .' Of course Martha Root did not either.
On Sunday, near the seaside spa town of Zoppot, in a little square surrounded by young fir trees, called the 'Esperanto Ground', a 'Jubilee Oak' was to be planted to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Esperanto. The Esperantists had brought earth from their homelands to place symbolically around the roots of the young tree.
The sun was hot and it was a long walk from Zoppot to the Esperanto Ground. As flags of Danzig and Zoppot and the Green Banner flew above, the Esperantists and some curious onlookers crowded into the small area prepared for the ceremony. After several speeches, Lidia came forward to pour earth from her father's tomb upon the roots of the Jubilee Oak. Then others approached with soil they had brought for the occasion. Taking the event very seriously, Martha Root had brought earth from the Tomb of Baha'u'llah in 'Akka and from the Tombs of the Bab and 'Abdu'1-Baha on Mount Carmel in Haifa, as well as some sent by an American friend from a place 'Abdu'1-Baha had once visited in New Jersey.
It was a solemn, symbolic moment as people from many countries offered their native and holy soils, bound together to nurture the tree that stood for unity and understanding. But the outside world intruded with symbolism of its own. A joumalist observed that in the sweltering weather, most of the dry earth brought for the ceremony ended up not in the ground but in the air - as dust on the wind.
And, almost three months later, the Zoppoter Zeitung reported that the Jubilee Oak had been maliciously destroyed by vandals. Although it was later replanted, in 1937 it was again destroyed and the large commemorative plaque tom down by German Nazis.
The hope of peace that many people had clung to during the years following the Great War was fading. Idealists ofLidia's generation had placed their faith in the League of Nations to keep peace and settle intemational disputes. But as these children of the war grew to