Equally regrettable, as we can now understand, was the fact that, when pressure on the League no longer promised immediate results, UEA pro- ceeded to turn its back on the League. Instead of using Esperanto to popularize the League's noble principles and thus prepare more fertile ground for future international agreements on Esperanto, the association little by little distanced itself from the guidelines laid down by Hodler. In the course of the 1920s, internationalism in general lost its attractiveness; nor did UEA work to resist this tendency. Indeed the Association became increasingly dependent on the national Esperanto societies, whose pref- erence was to direct their attention to their governments, often failing to demonstrate sufficient resistance to the nationalist currents in their own countries. Privat, social democrat and tireless campaigner against colonialism, was both predestined and sincerely committed to follow- ing the path shown him by his deceased friend Hodler; his erudition and charming personality won the sympathy of many delegates at the League—from the Czechoslovakian minister and later president Edvard Beneŝ, to Romain Rolland and Mahatma Gandhi.[209] But, assisted only by mediocre functionaries and surrounded by so many dreamers and politically uninformed Esperantists, he lacked the strength to inspire in the association the requisite confidence in its worldwide mission and the readiness to defend its internationalism against national jealousies.
UEA's deviation from its founder's ideals would make no sense, how- ever, without consideration of the fact that, after the war, and shortly after Hodler's death, a schism split the Esperanto movement along class lines. In August 1921, Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT: 'The Worldwide Non-national Association') was founded. This international organization of worker Esperantists in fact inherited certain of Hodler's guiding prin- ciples (e.g. an organizational structure built on individual membership), but at the same time its battle cry 'Down with neutralism!' shattered all relations with the neutral movement. It identified that movement as bourgeois, claiming that Esperanto had value and was worth supporting only as long as it could effectively serve the international class battle.
We will address the activities and significance of SAT in Part III. Here it is primarily important to note that the split between workers and 'neu- tralists' changed the face of the Esperanto movement profoundly—which in turn inevitably had its influence on public judgments about the lan- guage itself.
Before the war, as we have seen, the Esperantists of Germany, par- ticularly, were attacked for their alleged unpatriotic goals. During the war, they distributed documents, in Esperanto translation, presenting the viewpoint of the German army.[210] They assumed that after the war these activities would be interpreted as proof of their patriotism. In March 1915 the industrialist Albert Steche expressed his conviction that the wartime propaganda using Esperanto made it clear 'that the German Esperantists are not cosmopolitan dreamers but fervent and practical patriots who [...] spare no pains nor hold back resources to serve the fatherland'.[211]
But such arguments did little to impress Esperanto's chauvinist oppo- nents. With mocking comments about how rapidly the war succeeded in dislodging 'rootless' internationalism, they refused to conclude that the international language had now become more acceptable for Germans. Albert Zimmermann, for example, whom we mentioned earlier, recog- nized that subjectively the German Esperantists were good patriots, but warned that to come to such a conclusion 'the international character, the de-nationalizing effect of Esperanto' had to be ignored.[212] The militant nationalists in Germany were more exercised by the fact that the other side, particularly the French, also utilized Esperanto for wartime pro- paganda. Thus, the German and French Esperantists gained little from their wartime activities, which failed to generate much sympathy among the nationalists. And the movement's point of departure following the war was further complicated by the unprecedented flow of working people attracted to Esperanto; thus, class warfare entered the Esperanto movement. In several countries these new recruits did not join the tradi- tional, neutral association but organized their own free-standing workers' Esperanto unions.
This development was symptomatic of working people's desire to broaden their horizons beyond national boundaries and to engage imme- diately with internationalism, now that the end of the war had brought them new opportunities. In a document produced by the Committee on International Auxiliary Language, created in 1919 by the International Research Council, 'the rapidly awakening international consciousness of the man on the street', manifested particularly by the popularity of Esperanto among workers, was described as 'one of the most important features of the whole subject of international language development' from a sociological perspective. The Committee noted: 'If this interest of the masses can be carefully studied and sympathetically grasped by competent sociologists, it may be given constructive guidance for the benefit of all; but if neglected and left entirely to be developed by radicals, it may serve to merely fan the flame of bolshevism.'[213] We find similar recognition of the problem in the writings of Albert Steche, who as early as 1914 warned against 'influences hostile to people and state' within the Esperanto movement and insisted that:
Governments and communities must consult with one another to assure that nationally conscious members of the public have available to them everywhere the opportunity to learn Esperanto without charge. If this option doesn't exist, the would-be learners, as is now apparent, will turn to social democratic Esperanto courses, where they will be educated not only as Esperantists but also as social democrats.116
The postwar establishment and growth of a separate workers' Esperanto movement rapidly rendered redundant Steche's proposal that govern- ments make instruction in the language official as a way of avoiding the radicalization of the Esperantists. In any event, the favorable response that Esperanto found among workers reduced rather than stimulated the inclination of governments to support the Esperanto movement. Warnings like that of Steche against the penetration of socialist ideas in the ranks of Esperantists only served to supply ammunition to con- servative and reactionary regimes. Instead of coming to the conclusion that such infiltration should be halted by their own efforts to promote Esperanto, these regimes tended to turn their suspicions on the move- ment as a whole—including its politically neutral elements.
The dilemma of the middle-class Esperantists, unsettled by the flower- ing of Esperanto among the workers on the one hand and confronting elite misunderstanding on the other, is well illustrated in the person of Steche, who was president of the German Esperanto Association from 1920 to 1925. A member of the National Liberal Party and active in industrialists' organizations, Steche was neither the sinister reactionary of anti-capitalist textbooks nor the Esperantist dedicated exclusively to commercial profit by way of Esperanto.[214] He sought to base his plea for the introduction of Esperanto as the sole foreign language in elementary schools on a remarkable combination of ideas for the creation of har- mony among classes and nations:
This would be a more benevolent way ofbridging the gap between rich and poor; through Esperanto, the less prosperous person can, like the educated person of means, advance progressively, drawing on the finest works of world literature to do so, in easy linguistic intercourse with people of all ranks in the entire world. Thus social harmony in one's own country will contribute to harmony among the peoples of the earth [...][215]