Mrs Leonard advised Lidia not to go back to Europe and invited her to stay at their home in New Jersey. But Lidia refused, saying, 'I have family there and they are frightened.' 'She had faith that she might escape,' Mrs Leonard said later, 'that maybe by some miracle she might be spared.'
The very day the ship sailed, Allen McDaniel, in Washington, tried to contact Lidia. He had been continuing his efforts to get the immigration officials to reopen her case. But her papers had been mislaid in the immigration office and only reached the desk of the official in charge as Lidia's ship was sailing. The official, McDaniel reported, was sympathetic but refused to make any change. However, the immigration official suggested Lidia not go to Poland but to France or even Cuba and apply to return to the US on a six-months' or a year's residence as a lecturer. As a lecturer she would be exempt from the law covering 'alien contract labor' and could receive compensation for her Esperanto classes. But it was too late. Lidia was on her way to Poland, and it is unlikely that she would have changed her mind.
When the Pitsudski stopped at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lidia wrote Roan: 'Thank you, thank you for your love, much greater than I deserve.' She also posted a letter to Della:'Again I want to thank you - ' she wrote, 'thank you for everything you did for me from the first to the last moment, for all your work, often so full of difficulties.' She asked Della to thank all those who had sent farewell telegrams to the ship, which touched Lidia very much. So far the voyage had been smooth, she told Della, the ocean calm. There were few travelers in the tourist class, and she had the entire cabin to herself. Not many people, it seemed, were eager to travel to Poland during those wintry days of 1938.
One reason for the ship's lack of passengers was probably because many of those who had come to the United States on visitors' visas were remaining there as refugees. After the Kristallnacht pogroms, in mid-November President Roosevelt had announced that refugees already in the United States on visitors' visas would not be forced to retum to countries where they might face persecution. In spite of widespread anti-alien sentiment in the US at the time, some twenty thousand people were able to take advantage of this temporary relaxation in American immigration policy. But Lidia Zamenhof was not one ofthem.
While in America, Lidia had written a long essay entitled 'The Ways of God'. She left the typescript of it with Della Quinlan, asking her to translate it into English and submit it to World Order. Della apparently never did this, and the piece was never published. The essay was about the meaning ofsuffering. Clearly, in writing it, Lidia had drawn on her own experiences.
'The usual difficulties and sufferings of our everyday life are increased tenfold today by the circumstances of the unprecedented time in which we live,' Lidia began. 'In this day, the human hearts and minds tum to the Source of all and direct to that etemal Source a despairing question: why such suffering? Why didst Thou, Who art called Good and Compassionate, send pain to us? Why didst Thou fashion creation so that there is a place in it for suffering, Thou Who art called Perfect, Thou Who couldst have created everything in the state of constant and untouchable perfection?'
If it pleased God, she explained, He could have made creation in a state of static perfection. 'But He decided instead that etemal movement, as much physical as spiritual, should rule in the universe, that all should constantly evolve, progress and grow, that forms should decompose so that the liberated elements would fuse into ever new combinations and participate in ever higher realms of creation. In the existing order, man is born a small and weak infant, grows, matures, until he attains the fullness of his earthly destiny . . .
'God could have created man to be perfect from the beginning. But He made a choice which He knew to be better. He gave man potential perfections and endowed him with that attribute which belongs to Himself: free and conscious will, through which man raises himself upward on the path of his destiny. Baha'u'llah writes: "All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition."
'. . . Shall we claim, then,' Lidia continued, 'that it would havebeen more perfect if He had created us in the state of imposed perfection, perfection without will, without the tiniest effort, without any merit on our part?'
But why did suffering and pain have to be a part of man's development? 'Through oppositions and deficiencies we leam tojudge the value of everything,' she explained. 'Adam Mickiewicz, the great Polish poet, began his Pan Tadeusz thus: "Lithuania, my fatherland, a
Lithuanian realizes, as with his health, thy great worth having lost thee." In fact, do we recognize and enjoy the value of health when we are well? Usually respect for health only comes with illness. We realize the value of sight when we are blinded . . . we leam the value of hearing when we can no longer enjoy music and conversation with our fellows. We realize the value ofpeace when war weighs over our heads. We realize the sweetness of home when ashes cover the home hearth or fate forces us to leave it . . . Even the neamess of our dear ones we usually only leam to value when separation comes.
'In existence arranged as it is, there is a place for pain. That seems incomprehensible to us, unjust; and again we reproach our Creator. But a short reflection is enough to make us aware that often pain is our guardian. It warns us against what is bad. A toothache is certainly unpleasant, but it makes us go to the dentist so he can take care of the sick tooth before it becomes incurable or poisons the entire body. If we put our hand into the fire, we feel the terrible pain of a burn. But that very pain wams us of danger and makes us pull back our hand . . . Yearning is hard to bear, but it makes us retum to the object ofour love and thus becomes the cause of happiness . . .
'Often we are the cause of our own suffering, but instead of bravely investigating and recognizing that fact, which would lead us to the improvement of our own behavior, we blame others. If we put our hand into fire, we ourselves are guilty for the bum. If we treat others badly, we reap the same feelings and behavior in return, which makes us suffer. If we act against the law, whether it be a law of nature or a judicial or spiritual law, we bring the reaction of that law upon ourselves . . . And the suffering makes us aware of our misdeed, which we otherwise would not have noticed.
'But our misdeeds have an effect not only upon us personally . . . Man is one small cell of a great organism. The functioning of that cell influences the other cells and is influenced by them. The illness of one member causes illness in the entire body and, likewise, that member, even though it be healthy itself, must suffer for the general illness, even if it is brought about by causes completely apart from itself.
' And such a relationship, such suffering because of others, makes us aware that those others are our fellows, our brothers, that we do not have the right to exclaim, like Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and reject our responsibility for them. Because indeed we are our brothers' keepers, just as one cell in the organism is the keeper of another cell.'
For the believer, Lidia felt, suffering had a special function. 'Those who follow the real Truth are faithful to it to the last breath, whatever they may receive on earth in return for their faithfulness - criticism, mockery, hatred, persecution, death. "Trials and tribulations", writes Baha'u'llah, "have from time immemorial, been the lot of the chosen
Ones of God and His beloved, and such of His servants as are detached from all else but Him . . . Blessed are the steadfastly enduring, they that are patient under ills and hardships, who lamentnot over anything that befalls them, and who tread the path of resignation."