WED IN ESPERANTO.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 217, 12 September 1940, Page 8

WED IN ESPERANTO.

RED CROSS ROMANCE. LANGUAGE USEFUL IN BRITAIN (By Air.) LONDON, August 14. At a wedding at Lisbon, Portugal, this week, the marriage service was read in Esperanto. The bride wee Marie Meredith Kraus. 22-year-old German girl and Esperanto expert, who left her country because of the Nazis' antiCntholic policy. She went to Belgium and joined the Red Cross there Hβ. a nurse. The bridegroom was another Esperanto enthusiast, John Castle Coleman, 28-year-old British film actor, who was in Hollywood completing an Esperantist film. The film finished, Coleman sailed, for Europe and found Marie in the battle zone. They did Red Cross work together, and also organised an Eeperantist information bureau for refugees. When the Western Front collapsed the two retreated with the French troops, ami crossed the .Spanish frontier. Delc-ga-es from numerous Esperantist societies attended their marriage. Esperanto is proving increasingly useful in Britain, now that so many soldiers and sailors of different nationalities are there. The joint headquarters of the International Esperanto League and the British Esperanto Association at Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, are regularlv receiving requests from French, Czech, Polkh, Dutch and Norwegian serving men, asking to be put in. touch with Esperanto-speaking members' of the British forces.