WIDE USE OF ESPERANTO

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27584, 15 February 1955, Page 10

WIDE USE OF ESPERANTO

VALUE IN TRAVEL ILLUSTRATED CORRESPONDENT REPLIES TO MR BETTERIDGE A reply to an Englishman in Holland who described Esperanto as a “snare and a delusion” and “little more than an esoteric cult” in an article recently printed in “The Press,” has been made by a correspondent (Mr Bertram Potts, of Wellington) in a letter to the editor. “I took up Esperanto more than 40 years ago and found it of service while serving with the infantry in France and Belgium,” Mr Potts writes. “Since then I have been closely in touch with the progress cf the movement which today is very widespread indeed. In answer to Mr R. Betteridge I should like th quote a few interesting remarks from a published report made by Miss Olive Breeze, a school teacher, who recently returned to New Zealand from a working holiday overseas. “ ‘Wherever I went in Great Britain —wherever I went on the Continent — I was met by fellow Esperantists and found friends in even the most out of the way places,’ Miss Breeze says. ‘lt was a great adventure, a truly wonderful experience! I passed through customs barriers in foreign lands, but the language remained the same to me, for I was among Esperantists everywhere. So many people whom I met abroad paid dearly in pounds, shillings and pence for knowing only English and a smattering of some other national language. Why don’t more people in New Zealand learn the magic passport to exciting foreign travel—the wonderful international language, Esperanto?

“ ‘. I felt that Esperanto was a wand that banished the language barrier—that all foreign peoples spoke the same simple idiom. I 'was very glad that 1 had spent some little time acquiring a knowledge of the language before venturing abroad. A lot of people prepare for a world tour and neglect the most important thing of all —to take with them the key to international understanding. . . . What an exciting experience travelling in those foreign lands with the Esperanto “consular system of the Universal Esperanto Association, whose delegates meet trains, arrange accommodation, sight-seeing, visiting clubs and private homes. . . . To me there were no nationalities, no foreigners—just ordinary people talking the same simple international language. /* *• • And now the great congress at Zagreb with 1760 congressists from + coun JSl« s using one simple tongue—l76o practical people with no language problem. This was not a nNnJJ{rn Of th t Unite< J Nations or C NES p O ’ where the members have to depend on interpreters and electrical machinery to help them to exchange their thoughts. Imagine such councillors equipped with the blinkers or a bygone age. In breaking the language barrier, only the Esperantists have been progressive and successful—and for more than 60 years have demonstrated that a simple neutral language bliilt up of living roots and without grammatical exceptions can be easily acquired by the man in the street, so that he can use it with confidence and facility and with the assurance of his own mother tongue. The Zagreb congress—one of 38 similar Universal Esperanto Congresses—again showed the world that an international congress can function with all the understanding and dispatch of any national congress. Inside and outside the congress delegates spoke the one common language. . I had visited many lands and been welcome in many, many homes, thanks to the international language. Esperanto had taken me everywhere—often away from the beaten track normally followed by tourists. Even a good knowledge of one or two foreign, languages in no way compares with the enthusiastic welcome and fellowship and ease of complete understanding that goes with Esperanto. To all who intend to travel abroad, I say, learn Esperanto first and be at home no matter where you travel. There is certainly no more enjoyable hobby and method of broadening one’s horizon.’ “Miss Breeze’s comments completely disproves Mr Betteridge’s slighting references to Esperanto as a ‘snare and a delusion’ and ‘little more than an esoteric cult,’ ” Mr Potts concludes.