The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Number 3/The Wends

The Wends who to the number of about 200,000 inhabit a compact territory in Saxony and Prussia, acting on the basis of President Wilson’s principles signed by the Germans when the Armistice was concluded, also sent their representatives to Paris for the purpose of endeavoring at the Peace Conference to gain freedom and independence for their small nation, the final remnant of what was once a large Slavonic population in the basin of the Elbe. They regarded this as their final opportunity to protect themselves against complete Germanization and extermination. Their representative in Paris was Arnost Bart, the president of the Wendic National Council who has been at the head of the National Wendic movement ever since the revolutionary events in Germany. The hopes of the Wends which centred in the Peace Conference were not fulfilled. Finally the terms of the Peace Treaty involved only the cultural rights of national minorities under the protection of the League of Nations, and these extend also to the Wends.

But so far this protection has not protected. Bart, the leader of his small people, has just been sentenced at Leipzig to imprisonment in a fortress for three years.

The ostensible reason for his condemnation was the charge that he warned the Allies last April against Germany’s secret military preparations.