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What About the Workers? Part 3: The Formation of S.A.T.

© David Poulson

When Eugene Adam was released from military service in 1918 he returned to Paris a committed socialist. During the war, he had learned Esperanto with another member of his ambulance team as well as circumstances could permit and he had become convinced that an easy-to-learn auxiliary language would be of great value to any working class militants who needed to cooperate with, and learn from their comrades in other countries, but who were not able to commit the huge amount of time and effort required to learn another national language.

In 1919, Adam attended a meeting the purpose of which was to revive a workers' Esperanto Group known as "Liberiga Stelo" ("The Liberating Star"). At that meeting, he met Lucien Banner and Louis Glodeau who became life-long friends and supporters.

Shortly before this meeting took place, Adam had written a short pamphlet about international languages and, on the strength of that demonstration of his literary talent, it was decided that he should become the editor of a journal to be called Le Travailleur Esperantiste, or, in English, The Esperantist Worker.

Adam pointed out that he did not know Esperanto well enough to edit a journal, but his objection was brushed aside because it was intended that most of the contents of the journal would be written in the French language anyway. On that basis, Adam accepted but those editorial responsibilities resulted in him progressively improving his Esperanto until he had totally mastered the language.And he became convinced it Esperanto was the best auxiliary language for revolutionary socialists.

Before long, Adam began to write about the desirability of creating a new, international organisation for socialists, in which the Esperanto language would just be accepted as the main working language. The organisation would not be concerned with assisting the Esperanto movement but would encourage the development of the language itself.

As a result of promoting these ideas in the columns of Le Travailleur Esperantiste a small meeting of interested Esperantists met in Prague during the International Esperanto Congerence which took place there in 1921. The official attendance was recorded as 79 people from 15 different countries which is quite a good turn-out for an inaugural meeting and was certainly enough to establish "Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda" as the new organization was called.

By the end of the decade the membership of S.A.T. had grown to over 6,000 individuals and, despite the ups and downs which many left-wing organizations experienced in Europe between 1930 and 1960, it has remained a strong and influential group within the Esperanto movement. It has also attracted the support of some of the most outstanding Esperantists in the history of the movement. (While incurring the animosity of others...a point which will be explored in a later article.)

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