Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language

This combination of scientism, universalism, and pacifism attracted other Esperantists, such as the engineer and retired general Hyppolite Sebert. In 1898 Sebert established the Bureau bibliographique de Paris, and the next year he became president of the Association fran^aise pour l'avancement des sci- ences. In close contact with La Fontaine and Otlet, Sebert was also the most important advocate of Esperanto in French scientific circles. He also was in- strumental in the creation of the Esperantist Internacia Sciencia Asocio (In- ternational Scientific Association), which launched the journal Internacia Sciencia Revuo (1904-1923).10 A leading Esperantist, he ran the Centra Oficejo, the Central Office of the Esperanto movement, which, very much like La Fon- taine's and Otlet's International Institute for Bibliography, was a bibliograph- ical information center on Esperanto for Esperantists.

This link between bibliography or information studies and pacifism might sound strange. Remembering the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s, we tend to associate pacifism with other kinds of protest movements. But the pacifism of people like Sebert, Otlet, and La Fontaine (who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911) was of a very different nature. They were repre- sentatives of a liberal, "patriotic" pacifism, to borrow from Sandi Cooper, which recognized full sovereignty to nation-states, accepted "just wars," and worked for the establishment of an international court of justice, an interna- tional arbitration system, and, more ambitiously, a League of Nations able to enforce international agreements.11 This pacifism was the driving force be- hind the Universal Peace Congress of 1899, which became an annual event from that point forward, as well as the International Peace Bureau, established in 1891, in which La Fontaine served as president from 1907 to 1943. This was the pacifism of the upper echelons of society: journalists, scientists, indus- trialists, and intellectuals. They were men who had access to kings, emper- ors, diplomats, and prime ministers and understood power relations and the meaning of Realpolitik.

A central figure of this strand of pacifism was the French Esperantist Gaston Moch (1859-1935). The son of a German Jew of the Saarland, Moch studied at the Ecole polytechnique to pursue a military career. Alfred Drey- fus was a classmate. In 1891 Moch married a young woman from wealthy Parisian Jewish society. His wife's dowry of one million francs allowed him to quit the army and pursue his reflections on the need for reconciliation with Germany on the question of Alsace-Lorraine. When the Dreyfus Affair came to light, Moch helped found the Ligue de droits de l'homme, which at the turn of the century had 200,000 members. In the polarized political en- vironment of the Dreyfus Affair, the Ligue forged close contacts with Emile Arnaud's Ligue international de la paix et de la liberte, and from 1896 Moch became a prominent figure in the international peace movement.12

An ex-Volapukist, Moch thought that an artificial language could play a critical role in the pursuit of peace. Right after he joined the pacifist move- ment, he submitted a report that recommended the use of Esperanto.13 He also brought to the Esperanto camp the Briton W. T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, as well as Felix Moscheles, chairman of the International Arbitration and Peace Association. In 1905, Stead and Moscheles founded the first Esperanto society in the United Kingdom. Moch also co-opted for the Esperanto cause the Austrian journalist Alfred Fried (1864-1921), co- founder with Bertha von Suttner of the German Peace Society.14 In 1905, Moch's Esperantist network created the Internacia Societo Esperantista por la Paco (International Esperantist Society for Peace), which launched the monthly Espero pacifista (1905-1908). In December 1905, it had 300 mem- bers from twenty-three countries.

Moch's positivist pacifism was more consistently elaborated by his friend Alfred Fried, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner.15 Very much like Ostwald, La Fontaine, Sebert, and Moch, Fried portrayed the history of humankind and international relations as a preordained process leading to ever more efficient organization: "What we call the world history is nothing but a continuous organization process, a step by step progress in the transformation and reg- ulation of the energy components, a progressive transformation of power into law."16 For Fried, this organizing process would inevitably lead to the end of anarchy in international relations and the beginning of a coordinated world system, in keeping with the demands of science. But whereas Fried and Moch stopped there, other Esperantists went further and conflated this positivist, organizational-driven conception of world history with Social Darwinism. Leading exemplars of this amalgamation of pacifism, Social Darwinism, and Esperanto were the Frenchman Charles Richet (1850-1935) and the Swiss neu- rologist Auguste Forel (1848-1931).