INFLUENCE OF ESPERANTO

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 28, 3 February 1938, Page 26

INFLUENCE OF ESPERANTO

Claiming that the ideal of an international auxiliary language in the work for world peace was as high as any religion, Mr. Edgar Hornblow, president of the Wellington Esperanto Club, at the club's first meeting for 1938 on Monday night, devoted some time to an exposition of the way Esperanto was developing in Europe. A fifteen months' tour, much of it on bicycle in Europe, ",ave him . opportunities to study the growth of the language. It was not intended of Esperanto, said Mr. Hornblow, that it should supplant the languages of the world; its use was primarily supplementary. And that it had uses in that way he could testify from personal experience. The great fact of the language, he claimed, was that: it was extremely logical. It numbered only sixteen rules, and there were no exceptions or irregularities in them. It could b studied and mastered with, according to a. League of Nations finding, eight to ten times less work than a foreign language. It has an extensive literature of more than 8000 volumes, ranging from scientific works to light novels. And it provided a basis for the study of foreign conditions and foreign peoples far more readily than any other language.- « Other business transacted at. the meeting, the first in the club's new rooms in ■< Victoria . Street, included a description of the New Zealand Esperanto Congress at Christchurch during the New Year by Mr. W. L. Edmanson, J.P., F.8.E.A., honorary life president of the club, and the presentation by him to Mr. Nelson Hill .of the British Esperanto Association's diploma awarded for success in a recent examination. Mr. Vernon J. Leek, D.8.E.A., received congratulations on his appointment as New Zealand delegate for the International Esperanto League. More than 100 were present at the meeting, which was the forerunner of regular Monday night meetings. Many new members were present,and a start was made with free tuition classes. The secretary, Mr. Gordon Blong, announced the intention of the club to hold a picnic at Plimmerton next Sunday. -, -