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X. The First Esperanto International Congress 

Zamenhof thought the congress in Boulogne-sur-mer would be an opportune 

occasion for determining the social and linguistic status of Esperanto. He had always 

wanted to have less responsibility for Esperanto and his yearning for collective 

responsibility had increased when new leaders appeared in France. In April 1905, he 

again proposed the creation of a League to resolve the linguistic and organizational 

problems, but the movement's leaders in France opposed the idea. 

Besides the organizational problem, the question of language reform needed to be 

resolved. Indeed, already the Canadian socialist Albert Saint-Martin had begun using in 

his periodical La Lumo (The Light) an arbitrary alphabet without accented letters. 

Zamenhof and de Beaufront protested, but the Canadian periodical was supported by the 

French Jew Émile Javal, who, together with Saint-Martin, encouraged Michaux to put 

the question of the accented letters on the congress agenda. 

As a parliamentarian, Émile Javal was widely known in France because of the 

“Javal law”, which exempted from taxes the parents of seven or more children. He was 

the director of an ophthalmology clinic, a member of the French Academy of Medicine, 

the inventor of optical instruments and of an international system for measuring vision 

(dioptry, 1876). He suffered from poor vision himself for several years and became 

totally blind in 1900. 

Having proved, in his book Physiology of Reading and Writing that diacritical marks 

(accents placed above or below a letter) in the French language caused increased stress 

on the eyes, Javal could not accept diacritical marks in Esperanto. Because of Javal's 

expert authority, Zamenhof, the unknown eye doctor from Warsaw, greatly respected his 

opinion. In fact, Zamenhof and his wife stayed at Javal's home in Paris before the 

Boulogne congress. 

On July 28

th

, after spending several days in Berlin, Zamenhof arrived in Paris for the 

first time in his life. At the Hachette offices, he discussed a new contract. On the 29

th

, 

the Minister of Public Instruction, Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu-Martin, received him and 

named him a knight of the Legion of Honour following the decree to that effect signed 

the same day by French president Émile Loubert and prime minister Maurice Rouvier. 

At the Esperanto Print Society he met with Cart, Fruictier and Lengyel. He was received 

at the Paris city hall, presided over an awards ceremony for new Esperantists, attended 

banquets, including one in the Eiffel Tower and a big one in the Hotel Moderne with 250 

guests. He also spent a day in Rouen, where he met with Louis de Beaufront. 

Prior to Zamenhof's arrival in Paris, Boirac, Bourlet, Cart, Javal, Sebert, and 

Michaux held a meeting. Michaux read out the Congress Speech (Kongresa parolado) 

and the poem Preĝo sub la verda standardo (Prayer Under the Green Flag)

10

 that 

Zamenhof had sent to him. The others were so shocked by the mysticism of the texts that 

they decided to persuade Zamenhof to at least not read the Prayer at the Boulogne 

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congress. 

In Boulogne Zamenhof was invited to a pre-congress dinner with Michaux and the 

leaders of the Esperanto movement in France, who tried to force him to drop the 

mystical passages in his speech and to not read the Prayer. Zamenhof resisted the 

pressure. In the end, he agreed to drop only the last verse of the Prayer, which expressed 

a call for the unity of all religions. 

The first Universal Congress of Esperanto took place in Boulogne-sur-mer from the 

5

th

 to the 13

th

 of August, 1905 and attracted 688 participants from about twenty 

countries. The fact that Esperanto was the sole working language of the congress 

generated enthusiasm among the participants and dispelled any fears about the 

suitability of Esperanto as a spoken language. 

The fears of the leading French Esperantists regarding the public's reaction to 

Zamenhof's opening speech proved groundless. Doctor Esperanto was often interrupted 

by applause when he spoke of the time when the human family that had been united like 

brothers with one God in their hearts became strangers to each other because they could 

no longer communicate, and a state of eternal dissension sprang up among them. 

Prophets and poets dreamed of a far-off, vague time when human beings would once 

again begin to understand each other and would again come together as one family. But 

this was only a dream. He went on to say: 

... for the first time in human history, we, citizens of the most diverse 

nations, stand side by side, not as strangers, not as competitors, but as