Louis Bastien (Esperantist)

Alone in a horse-drawn two-wheeled light cart, Bastien would survey the line of signal towers in the low and marshy areas between Mahajanga and Maevatanana, then follow the high plateaus along the Betsiboka River to Antananarivo.

[1] Most of the soldiers from France who died in the Madagascar campaign lost their lives not in war with the poorly armed and unorganized local population but from "paludal fever."

[1] It was not till three years later that Sir Ronald Ross conclusively determined that the cause of malaria is a parasite transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito.

[1] After Madagascar was proclaimed a French colony in 1896, Bastien returned to France, to be stationed at Amiens, where he completed his fr:Licence en droit (Bachelor of Laws) to qualify for l'Intendance (the Army's Supply Corps).

Admitted to l'École Supérieure de l'Intendance (now fr:École militaire supérieure d'administration et de management) and having received his fourth stripe as a Commandant (a rank equivalent to Major — every quartermaster is a senior officer), he followed a trajectory that led him through the ranks successively to Besançon, Lons-le-Saulnier, Épinal, Valenciennes, Commercy and Châlons-sur-Marne.

By the end of the war, he was a Quartermaster-General, Second Class in Paris, and in 1919 he went to Strasbourg to serve as director of the Supply Corps for the Alsace district.

Under his leadership, the Estraro (the UEA Steering Committee) declared, on September 18, 1936, the foundation of a new association, the International Esperanto League (IEL).