Lingvo Internacia, as it was called, was published by the Esperanto Club of Uppsala, in Sweden, and edited by Paul Nylen. For almost twenty years it remained the principal journal for Esperantists throughout the world. "The world?" Well, yes. Eleven years after the appearance of the first issue of Lingvo Internacia, Esperanto groups had been founded in the following countries.
1. Countries with national Esperanto associations.
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Rumania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the USA.
2. Countries with local Esperanto clubs only
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Japan, New Zealand, North Africa, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Esperantists has also begun to wear a badge in the form of a five-pointed green star - to identify themselves as Esperanto speakers. Why a green star? Because the very word Esperanto is derived from the word for hope and both the star and the colour green are symbols of hope. The five points of the star represent the five continents, so the green star of Esperantists is a visual statement expressing the hope that Esperanto will be spoken throughout the world. As indeed it now is.
(Note. That doesn't mean spoken by everybody in the world: an impossible dream.)
In August 1905, in the French town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the first International Esperanto Conference was held. Six hundred and eighty eight people from twenty different countries attended and only one language was spoken: Esperanto. Zamenhof had been asked to give the opening speech and, as he had never spoken in public before, he was very nervous addressing such a large crowd on such an important, historic occasion. But Zamenhof understood the fundamental significance of what had happened, just as he had always understood "la interna ideo" of Esperanto. As he spoke, he grew in confidence and said:
"Often people of different nationalities meet and understand one another but what a difference between their understanding and ours! There are only a few of those who meet understand one another - those who have the means to devote much time and money to the learning of foreign languages - and all the others take part in the meeting physically, but not mentally; but in our meeting everyone understands everyone else, everyone understands who wants to understand, and neither poverty nor lack of time can make anyone deaf to what we say....
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