Although she teased the young Frenchman, the sight of the military uniform probably wrenched her heart with pity. She might have been remembering another French Esperantist she had met, who had once worn a smart uniform too. He was a blinded war veteran, his eyes covered by a black band. 'He gave his eyes to the fatherland . . .' Lidia had written in an article, 'and the fatherland in gratitude placed upon his breast a red ribbon . . . Whom did that sacrifice serve?' she asked. 'Did the fatherland gain by the crippling of its son? Who was made happier because of it?
'Ifit were a case ofsacrifices freely offered, made with full conviction for a rational end!' she exclaimed. 'If it were a case of pioneers who perish of yellow fever while draining the swamps! If it were a case of the friends of mankind, who die from experimental serum to spare the lives of others! Then we would respectfully bow our heads before those sacrifices, which deserve monuments more than do generals and marshals.
'But those sacrifices that have been exacted from human beings dressed in uniforms have served no purpose. They have brought happiness to no one, and they have brought unhappiness to millions.
'And perhaps soon once more . . .
'None of us knows whether tomorrow his own eyes will not be tom out by a bullet . . . whether tomorrow his own eyes will not be covered with the black band, whether he will even be allowed to tread upon the earth. As long as there is still time, let us exert our efforts to open the blind eyes of those who believe that the red ribbon can ever make up for the shadows of the black band . . . to warn those who, a thousand times blind, are rushing toward the abyss. To cry throughout the world: "Away with war! Peace is sacred!"'
In May at an international conference on 'Esperanto in Modem Life', held by the International Esperanto League and the French Society for the Propagation of Esperanto, Lidia presented her Cseh demonstration lesson and gave several speeches. In one lecture, she spoke of the evolution of human society up to the present - the time of the nations. Was there anything greater that could claim one's loyalty? The answer she gave was: mankind.
Not all in the audience were receptive to her words. Once again, nationalism was strong in France. More than thirty years earlier, Ludwik Zamenhof had stood before an audience in France at a time when nationalistic fervor was strong and had spoken fearlessly of his convictions. Now, as Lidia found herself in a similar situation, this time she spoke of him.
The author of Esperanto, she told them, 'always had a vision: the vision of one great family circle, based on the foundation of neutral language, the vision of humanity reunited through understanding, the vision of a happy era when "we shall pull down the walls between peoples". And that vision was everything in his life. It was his highest goal. All else was secondary: the language itself was only a tool for attaining that goal. And although he never sought influence, although in 1912 he officially rejected the title of Majstro, in order to be free to serve his beloved ideal, Esperanto is so linked with him, his concepts have stamped upon the movement a mark so indelible, that one simply cannot completely understand the Esperanto idea without knowing the ideas ofZamenhof.'
Those ideas were contained in his philosophy of Homaranismo, which was now all but forgotten. Each person, Lidia said, must recognize that whatever nation, race, religion or class he belonged to, he was before all else a human being. The principles of Homaranismo, she added, 'prepared man for a new role': to feel himself a member of humanity.
In another speech at the conference she talked of the Baha'i Faith, which she believed embodied those principles of her father. 'The Baha'is also use Esperanto in practice to propagate their ideas,' Lidia told the gathering. The International Baha'1 Bureau corresponded in Esperanto; Baha'1 literature was available in the language; and there was the Esperanto Baha'1 magazine, La Nova Tago, published under the direction of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Germany and Austria. (The magazine, as Lidia knew, was now forbidden in the Third Reich. Barely a week after Lidia's speech, the Baha'1 Faith itself would be forbidden in Germany by order of SS chief
Heinrich Himmler, all Baha'f acrivities prohibited and the National Spiritual Assembly dissolved soon after.) 'The Baha'fs', Lidia told her audience, 'see in Esperanto not only a means to spread their Faith . . . They see in it the law of God Himself, one of the God-given principles of the New World Order.'
But the picture she painted of the Baha'fs' acceptance of Esperanto was more an expression of her fondest wish and desire than it was of reality.
While indeed some Baha'is, among them some of the most distinguished and prominent leaders of the Faith, were enthusiastic Esperantists, other Baha'fs seemed uninterested in the whole question of international language. They applauded the idea, but felt no pressing need to learn Esperanto. The Esperantists could not understand this; if an international language was one of the Baha'i principles, Esperanto would seem to be its fulfillment. Why, then, they wondered, did not more Baha'is learn the language and use it, and why were the Baha'fs reluctant to claim Esperanto as their own international language? Many Esperantists saw this as hypocrisy.
In fact, the Baha'fs and the Esperantists differed in the way in which each group believed an intemational language should be established. The Baha'f writings stated that in the future the governments of the world and the Universal House ofjustice (the supreme administrative institution of the Baha'f Faith which had not yet come into being at that time), would choose a universal auxiliary language. Most Baha'fs, therefore, felt they need not be concerned about the matter until that time came.
The Esperantists, on the contrary, believed that the international language must come into being in the same way that native languages did - through practical use, without waiting for an oflicial decision. In 1891 Zamenhof had warned the Esperantists not to wait for govemments or important persons to support Esperanto; they would take notice, he had said, only after Esperanto became successful on its own. The Esperantists had leamed the truth of his words as for decades they tried in vain to place the matter before govemments and intemational bodies, such as the League of Nations. But the debates about international language always degenerated into a tug-of-war between speakers of various national tongues. Waiting for governments to act would delay the adoption of an official international language perhaps for centuries, they believed, while the problem-lack ofcommunication and understanding among peoples- persisted and even grew worse.
The Baha'is and the Esperantists shared the belief that an inter- national language would help to break down the barriers between peoples. But the Esperantists felt its immediate need more acutely and recognized that were the governments of the world ever to reach such a level of co-operation that they could agree on a world language, the problem which international language could have helped solve would no longer exist. In such a world of co-operation and mutual agreement between the nations, an international language would be merely a convenience.
Those Baha'fs who were also Esperantists saw no reason why the two approaches should exclude each other: if Esperanto were to spread as a 'grass-roots' movement throughout the world, when the time came for an official decision to be made, the choice would be obvious. And they knew that, as Dr Zamenhof had warned when he first presented Esperanto, before *everyone' learned the language, some individual 'ones' must take that step first. If people refused to leam Esperanto, thinking they must wait until an official intemational language was chosen, they would in effect assure Esperanto's failure.