Vivu!

Malamikete de las nacjes Kado, Kado, jam temp' esta! La tot' homoze in familje Konunigare so deba.*

So sang the young founding students of Esperanto, the universal language, back in 1878 in Bialystok, Russia (now in Poland). Last week postwar Esperantists were again vocalizing, but to a different tune.

At the first Danube Valley Esperanto Conference recently held in Budapest,/- with Communist blessings, 230 delegates launched an approved program for systematizing the teaching of Esperanto in the high schools of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Lewis Kokeny, mild-mannered deputy president of the Hungarian branch of the movement, made a keynote speech with a curious iron-curtain slant. Said he: "We modern Esperantists do not concern ourselves any more with the old idea of corresponding in Esperanto with people in faraway places . . . That was an oldfashioned, romantic idea . . . Our immediate neighbors are what count." Western Esperantists, he admitted, still believe that their language should remain "politically neutral." On this point Kokeny was firm. "Here we are convinced that Esperanto must cooperate with progress and that neutrality is not possible."

Given the kind of progress he meant, Esperantists east of the iron curtain would be expected to chant in unison: "Vivu nia grandega cefo Stalin!" Cefo means leader; the rest is easy.

* The present Esperanto version differs slightly from the 1878 language; the English translation: Hatred of nation for nation Fall, fall, it is already time! The whole of humanity in one family Must unite themselves.

/- Hungarians are especially interested in Esperanto because their language is so far removed from any other, except Finnish and Estonian. Only two words derived from the Hungarian --goulash and coach--are in common use in English.

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