As in previous years, at the congress Lidia also addressed the Union of Esperantist Women. She told them, as she had the year before, that they could become a force for peace. She urged them not to let their children play with war toys 'because the toy of childhood will become a terrible reality in adulthood', and to teach them that children of other races and other lands were just like themselves. Children, she said, should be encouraged to cultivate friendships 'not only with children of their own race or people, but with children ofother lands, above all, with children of those lands from which they are separated by the barriers of political hatred and prejudice'.
This they could easily do through Esperanto, she said, and she encouraged her audience to teach the international language to the children in their care. By this means, Lidia concluded, 'Above and beyond the borders a wondrous bridge will be built of the children's hearts. Upon that bridge the mature generation will meet sometime and build a new, better future.'
After the business meetings of the congress ended, Lidia, with her family, went on the congress cruise across the Mediterranean to Malta and Tripoli, Libya, on a chartered ship flying the Green Banner.
When Lidia returned to France to begin her autumn courses, she was exhausted. The first course was to be in Haguenau, Alsace, in the farthest northeast corner of France, and immediately after it she would have to travel south to teach in Saint-Etienne, Hyeres and Toulon. From Haguenau she wrote her friends Mies and Hans Bakker that she had done so much during the summer in connection with the congress and cruise that she was very tired. She had hardly rested at all, she admitted. Now she had a heavy schedule ahead of her, but Lidia was confident she could, as she always did, summon up the strength and vitality that always amazed her students so. The fatigue, she was sure, would soon pass.
SEVENTEEN
Let Our Star Be the Beacon
Lidia's presence in France had indeed begun a renaissance of Esperanto in that country. But even as adoring crowds of new Esperantists and sympathizers listened to her exhortations to carry out the ideals of Zamenhof, in the international Esperanto movement another crisis was brewing. Once again the principles of Zamenhof were at stake, and the question of neutrality became the cause of division among the Esperantists.
'NeutraF did not mean the same thing to everyone. To Zamenhof it had meant that no one nation or group of people should be favored over any other; it meant equality of treatment and justice equally for all. But now some Esperantists, abandoning the spirit of Zamenhofs intent, asserted that the international language should be so absolutely neutral that it would have no moral content whatsoever. Esperanto, they felt, should be regarded merely as a tool, which even Nazis and fascists should be encouraged to use for their own purposes if it pleased them. In some countries, including France, there were calls for the creation of special nationalist Esperanto societies. Some even disparaged the ideals of Zamenhof as old-fashioned nineteenth- century notions which should be abandoned.
In Geneva a significant change had taken place in the leadership of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), the international organization of the 'neutral' movement, founded in 1908. For some time the organization had been beset by financial problems, caused, among other things, by the high cost of living in Geneva, where the organization's office was located. In addition, among the leaders there was division about the role of the national societies in the UEA as well as the stand Esperantist organizations ought to take on the matter of nationalism. The UEA was reorganized, but Andrei Cseh and Edmond Privat - prominent supporters of Zamenhofs ideals - were not reelected to its governing committee, and in protest several other leaders resigned.
The new UEA officials felt the movement ought to shed the idealism of men like Cseh and Privat and 'adapt to the needs of the times'. The new president was Louis Bastien, a French general; the vice-president was Anton Vogt, a German member of the Nazi party. Until now the political situation in Germany had been avoided in the Esperanto press in an attempt to remain 'neutral*. But following the change of leadership in the UEA, its official journal Esperanto printed an article entitled 'The German View on the Racial Problem'. It attempted to present the Nazi racist theories of'racial purity' and the absurd idea that the 'blurring of lines between races' was 'the most dangerous and gravest sin against life'. The articleclaimed not tojudge the relative value of any group of people, merely that races were 'internally and externally different'. Had Ludwik Zamenhof been alive, he would have been outraged and saddened that an Esperanto journal could even consider printing such lies, which struck at the heart of everything he had struggled for. But Ludwik Zamenhof was not there to protest.
Instead, it was Lidia who spoke out, in an article called 'Nia misio' ('Our Mission'), which, to thecreditofEsperanto, appearedin thesame issue. Lidia was alarmed at what was happening in the Esperanto movement, especially in Germany. The Nazi party members within the movement were moving against the Jewish Esperantists. In 1934 about twenty Jewish delegates of UEA were forced out of their positions.
From the pages of Esperanto, Lidia challenged the Esperantists to fight against the current attitude of anti-internationalism. As Dr Zamenhof had done so often during his lifetime, in strong words she asserted that Esperanto could not be separated from its inner idea.
The Great War, Lidia wrote, 'not only killed millions of people, it also poisoned the spirits of millions . . . revived the primitive blind cult of force and the belief that might makes right. Brotherhood between peoples, the solidarity of the human race, good will in international relations - all this became a mist, vapor. All this now seems to millions only unrealistic babble, a naive fairy tale for overgrown children. The bloody battles changed people into beasts, but although the bloodletting stopped, the brutality did not cease. Because that terrible hate . . . did not end. The thick walls still stand, more strongly than ever, between the divided peoples.'
Now, all that sought to break down those walls, or to preach the brotherhood of mankind or love toward one's enemy, had become suspect. 'This mentality', she asserted, 'is Esperanto's greatest enemy . . . We must battle it. As long as chauvinism rules in the world, as long as everything international is odious to it, Esperanto has no chance of victory.'
The battle for Esperanto, she asserted, could not be separated from the struggle for the vaster world concept of mankind. 'The inter- national language and its inner idea are not two separate things, one of which we can put away in the desk drawer if we wish and show only the other. They form one living whole, whose body is the language, and [whose] soul - the spirit [behind that language]. If we choose to separate the body from the soul, nothing would remain but a rotting cadaver.
'We must propagate everywhere not only the language Esperanto, but also that for which it was created - the coming together of and friendship between peoples. And we must in no way become tired or discouraged in the struggle, because for us it is a battle oflife and death. Woe to our Cause, ifhumanity's bloody nightmare should retum. For too long a time, it will delay the victory of Esperanto! . . .
'We must not permit national ambitions to raise their heads among us. . . Esperanto was created so that the peoples should feel equal with each other, not so that through it they should try to raise one above the others . . .'