GREEK KINGS ROMANCE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 3 September 1915, Page 8

GREEK KINGS ROMANCE

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

For personal as well as constitutional reasons King Constantino of Greece is endeavoring to maintain the strictest neutrality in this great war, in spite of the ciamor of the populace in favor of intervention on behalf of the Allies. His Majesty, has ties of relationship with the Allies as well as with Germany, for his w;fe ; who was Princess Sophie of Prussia, is at the same time a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a sister of the Kaiser. -King Constantine, on the other hand, is a first cousin of both "King George and of the Czar, being a nephew of their respective mothers, Queen Alexandra and the Dowager Empress Marie of Russia, who were sisters of King George of Greece, King Constantino's father, who was assassinated two years ago.. OFFENDED THE KAISER. King Constantine met his wife and fell in love with the pretty Princess Sophie when he was being educated and trained at a German military school. His affection was reciprocated, and although the father of the young lady, the hapless Emperor Frederick 111., died before the engagement of the lovers ccmld be announced, the course of their affection ran smoothly, and they were married about a year after the death of the Emperor at Athens. The Kaiser, however, never forgave his sister for seceding from the Lutheran faith and joining the Greek Church,-to which the Royal family .of Greece belongs. For many years brother and sister did not meet, and it was only on the death of her mother, to whom the quarrel was a source of the deepest grief, "that a reconciliation between them took place: but even then it lacked sincerity. FOND OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. A. clever and gifted woman, Princess bohpie has been of the greatest help to her husband. That she has the courage of her convictions is strikingly illustrated by the fact that during the war which Cxreece fought with Turkey in the latter years of the last century she was the only member of the-Royal family who had the courage to say that it was bmind to end in disaster, and she was the only person who urged Kino; George, her father-in-law, to conclude peace before his army had been entirely annihilated. King Constantine is as popular with his subiects as was his father. Not a little of the affection which, exists between his Majesty and the people of Greece.is due to his bonhomie, and the manW in which ho at all times mixes with his peonle. Travel is a passion with King Constantine, and he has tramped incognito through many of the countries, of Em-cme.