Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on EducationBartholdt, Richard
History
Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education
Bartholdt, Richard
Esperanto
Here is a circular issued by a Paris department store. All the big
department stores of Paris not only use Esperanto in their publications,
but actually have interpreters for Esperanto in their stores. The
biggest ink firm in the world--the Stephens Blue Ink Co., in London--use
this language for their correspondence. About six years ago they began
to use Esperanto and published their advertisements and their circulars
for foreign trade entirely in Esperanto. The town of Antwerp publishes
an illustrated guide of the town in Esperanto. Here is a very big
Anglo-American firm of medical supplies, Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.,
and they use Esperanto in many of their circulars. The Government
of Brazil three years ago sent a man to lecture in Europe as to the
attractions of Brazil. That man lectured in Paris to an audience of
3,000 people entirely in Esperanto, and the Government published his
lecture in that language. Here is a curious document. This was issued by
the anti-alcohol congress in Italy last year, and you will notice that
Esperanto is used, and that it is recommended as the only remedy against
the language trouble which entirely hampered the deliberations of this
congress, as it does all international conventions of every kind. I will
hand this to Mrs. Crafts, because she will be able to tell you more
about it, since she was there.
That is the commercial side of it, and these are only a very few
samples of the actual and practical use being made of Esperanto in
this one alone. I could produce, no doubt, a great many more such
examples, but I can not carry them all about with me. Here are some 60
to 70 guide leaflets published by so many different towns in France,
in Italy, in Austria, in Germany, in England, and in several other
countries--leaflets printed in Esperanto for the use of foreigners and
tourists. They give them information in Esperanto about the various
things they might first need to know on arriving at those cities. For
instance, here is Milan, Italy, and Poitiers, France, and Insbruck.
Austria, and Tavia, Italy, and Davos, Switzerland, and so on. In the
same line here are 20 more elaborate guidebooks to various towns in
Europe, published entirely in Esperanto by the local authorities. Of
course, you will not have the time to look at all these things just now,
but I will leave them with you. Then, again, I think I can safely say
that there are over 100 periodicals published in Esperanto in different
countries.
Esperanto is making very rapid progress in Japan and China; for
instance, I have here an excellent Esperanto paper published by a native
society in Japan.
The CHAIRMAN. In what nation is it progressing most rapidly?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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