La interna ideo: Geneva, 1906

The stanza Boulogne did not hear

Zamenhof ended his opening speech at Boulogne with a poem, Preĝo sub la verda standardo, Prayer under the green banner. He recited stanzas 1 to 5. The sixth, on the three Abrahamic faiths, was left out at the organisers' insistence:

Kristanoj, hebreoj aŭ mahometanoj, / ni ĉiuj de Di' estas filoj.

Christians, Hebrews or Muslims, we are all children of God.

• Zamenhof, Preĝo sub la verda standardo, sixth stanza

The usual explanation is the antisemitism of the Dreyfus years in France. The stanza reached print in 1906, but Zamenhof never printed it in his Krestomatio, so few readers know it.

Two words date it. Mahometanoj is the old word; today a Muslim is an islamano. And Di' is Dio with its -o cut for the metre, the apostrophe poetry allows.

La interna ideo: Geneva, 1906

The phrase is not in the Declaration. Zamenhof named it at the second congress, in Geneva in August 1906:

Sed por ke nia laborado estu fruktoporta, ni devas antaŭ ĉio bone klarigi al ni la internan ideon de la esperantismo.

But for our work to bear fruit, we must above all make clear to ourselves the internal idea of Esperantism.

• Zamenhof, Geneva, 1906

The context was a pogrom. In June 1906 Białystok, his home town, had seen people with axes and iron bars attack their neighbours for speaking another language and holding another faith. He said so from the platform: Terure altaj kaj dikaj estas ankoraŭ la interpopolaj muroj, terribly high and thick are still the walls between peoples.

Some Esperantists now said the language should never be linked with any idea, even privately. His answer: Ho, ne, ne, neniam!, oh no, no, never! His short name for the idea was frateco kaj justeco inter ĉiuj popoloj, brotherhood and justice among all peoples. He still granted every Esperantist the right vidi en Esperanto nur lingvon, to see in Esperanto only a language.

At Cambridge in 1907 he explained why the clause existed: many people would not learn the language for fear of being taken for partisans of the idea, so the Declaration said otherwise por ne fortimigi de ni la grandajn amasojn, so as not to frighten the great masses away.