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Sophia of Prussia

Sophia of Prussia (Sophie Dorothea Ulrike Alice, Σοφία Δωροθέα Ουλρίκη Αλίκη; 14 June 1870 – 13 January 1932) was Queen of Greece from 1913 to 1917 and from 1920 to 1922 as the wife of King Constantine I.

A member of the House of Hohenzollern and child of Frederick III, German Emperor, Sophia received a liberal and Anglophile education, under the supervision of her mother Victoria, Princess Royal. In 1889, less than a year after the death of her father, she married her third cousin Constantine, heir apparent to the Greek throne. After a difficult period of adaptation in her new country, Sophia gave birth to six children and became involved in the assistance to the poor, following in the footsteps of her mother-in-law, Queen Olga. However, it was during the wars which Greece faced during the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that Sophia showed the most social activity: she founded field hospitals, oversaw the training of Greek nurses, and treated wounded soldiers.

However, Sophia was hardly rewarded for her actions, even after her grandmother Queen Victoria decorated her with the Royal Red Cross after the Thirty Days' War: the Greeks criticized her links with Germany. Her eldest brother, German Emperor William II, was indeed an ally of the Ottoman Empire and openly opposed the construction of the Megali Idea, which could establish a Greek state that would encompass all ethnic Greek-inhabited areas. During World War I, the blood ties between Sophia and the Emperor also aroused the suspicion of the Triple Entente, which criticized Constantine I for his neutrality in the conflict.

After imposing a blockade of Greece and supporting the rebel government of Eleftherios Venizelos, causing the National Schism, France and its allies deposed Constantine in June 1917. Sophia and her family then went into exile in Switzerland. Sophia's second son, Alexander, replaced his father on the throne. At the same time, Greece entered the war alongside the Triple Entente, which allowed it to grow considerably. After the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in 1919 and the untimely death of Alexander the following year, the Venizelists abandoned power, allowing the royal family to return to Athens. However, the defeat of the Greek army against the Turkish troops of Mustafa Kemal forced Constantine to abdicate in 1922, at which point his eldest son became King George II. Sophia and her family were then forced to a new exile, and settled in Italy, where Constantine died one year later, in 1923. With the proclamation of the Republic in Athens the following year, Sophia spent her last years alongside her family, before dying of cancer in Germany in 1932 at the age of 61.

Birth in a difficult context
Princess Sophie was born in the Neues Palais in Potsdam, Prussia, on 14 June 1870 as the daughter of Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia, and Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom. The Crown Prince was the son of King William I of Prussia, and the Princess Royal was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Frederick William and Victoria were already the parents of a large family and as the penultimate child, Sophie was eleven years younger than her eldest brother, the future William II of Germany. Sophie's parents were a close couple, both on sentimental and political levels. Being staunch liberals, they lived away from the Berlin court and suffered the intrigues of a very conservative German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, and members of the House of Hohenzollern.

A week after Sophie's birth, a case relating to succession to the throne of Spain damaged the Franco-Prussian relations. The tone between Paris and Berlin worsened even further after Bismarck published the humiliating Ems Telegram on 13 July 1870. Six days later, the French government under Emperor Napoleon III declared war on Prussia and the states of the German Confederation offered support to Prussia, which then appeared as the victim of French imperialism. It was in this difficult context that Sophie was christened the following month, though all the men present were in uniform, as France had declared war on Prussia. Sophie's mother described the event to Queen Victoria: "The Christening went off well, but was sad and serious; anxious faces and tearful eyes, and a gloom and foreshadowing of all the misery in store spread a cloud over the ceremony, which should have been one of gladness and thanksgiving".

However, the conflict lasted only a few months and even led to a brilliant German victory, leading to the proclamation of Sophie's grandfather William I as the first German emperor on 18 January 1871.

Anglophile education
Sophie was known as "Sossy" during her childhood (the name was thought to have been picked because it rhymed with "Mossy", the nickname of her younger sister Margaret).

The children of the Crown Princely couple became grouped into two by age: William, Charlotte, and Henry who were favored by their paternal grandparents, while Viktoria, Sophie and Margaret were largely ignored by them. Sophie's two other brothers, Sigismund and Waldemar, died at a young age (Sigismund died before she was born, and Waldemar when he was 11 and she was 8); this drew the Crown Princess and her three younger daughters closer together, calling them "my three sweet girls" and "my trio".

The Crown Princess, believing in the superiority of all things English, had her children's nurseries modeled on her childhood. Sophie was raised with a great love for England and all things associated with it as a result, and had frequent trips to visit her grandmother Queen Victoria, whom she loved. Sophie often stayed in England for long periods, especially on the Isle of Wight, where she liked to collect shells with her older siblings.

Because she was generally avoided by her paternal grandparents, Sophie's formative years were mainly shaped by her parents and her maternal grandmother. As a little girl she was so deeply attached to Queen Victoria that the Crown Princess did not hesitate to leave her daughter for long periods under the care of her grandmother.

In Germany, Sophie largely stayed with her parents at two main residences: the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin, and the Neues Palais in Potsdam. Like her sisters Viktoria and Margaret, she was particularly close to her parents and their relationship became even closer after the death in 1879 of Waldemar, the favorite son of the Crown Princely couple.

Meeting and engagement to Constantine
In 1884, Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece, turned sixteen and his majority was declared by the government. He then received the title of Duke of Sparta. Soon after, Constantine completed his military training in Germany, where he spent two full years in the company of a tutor, Dr. Lüders. He served in the Prussian Guard, took lessons of riding in Hanover and studied political science at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig.

After a long stay in England celebrating her grandmother's Golden Jubilee, Sophie became better acquainted with Constantine in the summer of 1887. The Queen watched their growing relationship, writing "Is there a chance of Sophie's marrying Tino? It would be very nice for her, for he is very good". Crown Princess Victoria also hoped that Sophie would make a good marriage, considering her the most attractive among her daughters.

During his stay at the Hohenzollern court in Berlin representing the Kingdom of Greece at the funeral of Emperor William I in March 1888, Constantine saw Sophie again. Quickly, the two fell in love and got officially engaged on 3 September 1888. However, their relationship was viewed with suspicion by Sophie's older brother William and his wife Augusta Victoria, the latter of whom she despised. This betrothal was not completely supported in the Greek royal family either: Queen Olga showed some reluctance to the projected union because Sophie was Lutheran and Olga would have preferred that her son marry an Orthodox Christian. Despite the difficulties, the wedding was scheduled for October 1889 in Athens.

Death of Emperor Frederick III
This period fell on an unhappy time for Sophie's family however, as her father Emperor Frederick III was dying an agonizing death of throat cancer. His wife and children kept vigil with him at the Neues Palais, even celebrating Sophie's birthday and offering her a bouquet of flowers as a gift. Frederick died the next day. Sophie's eldest brother became Emperor William II. He quickly ransacked his father's things in the hopes of finding "incriminating evidence" of "liberal plots". Knowing that her three youngest daughters were more dependent on her than ever for emotional support, the now-Dowager Empress Frederick remained close to them: "I have my three sweet girls - he loved so much - that are my consolation".

Already shocked by the attitude of her eldest son, the Dowager Empress was deeply saddened by Sophie's upcoming marriage and move to Athens. Nevertheless, she welcomed the happiness of her daughter and consoled herself in a voluminous correspondence with Sophie. Between 1889 and 1901, the two women exchanged no less than 2,000 letters. On several occasions, they were also found in each other's homes, in Athens and Kronberg. The preparations of Sophie's wedding were "hardly a surprising development considering the funeral atmosphere that prevailed at the home of her widowed mother".

Auspicious marriage to the Greeks
On 27 October 1889, Sophie married Constantine in Athens in two religious ceremonies, one public and Orthodox and another private and Protestant. They were third cousins in descent from Paul I of Russia, and second cousins once removed through Frederick William III of Prussia. Sophie's witnesses were her brother Henry and her cousins Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales; for Constantine's side, the witnesses were his brothers Princes George and Nicholas and his cousin the Tsarevich of Russia. The marriage (the first major international event held in Athens) was very popular among the Greeks. The names of the couple were reminiscent to the public of an old legend which suggested that when a King Constantine and a Queen Sophia ascended the Greek throne, Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia would fall to Greek hands. Immediately after the marriage of the Crown Prince, hopes arose among the Greek populace for the fulfilment of the Megali Idea, i.e. the union of all Greeks in the same state. Abroad, the marriage of Constantine and Sophie raised much less enthusiasm. In France, it was feared that the arrival of a Prussian princess in Athens would switch the Kingdom of Greece to the side of the Triple Alliance. In Berlin, the union was also unpopular: German interests were indeed important in the Ottoman Empire and the Emperor did not intend to help Greece simply because the Greek crown prince was his new brother-in-law.

Nevertheless, in Athens, the marriage ceremony was celebrated with pomp and gave rise to an especially significant pyrotechnic spectacle on the Acropolis and the Champ de Mars. Platforms were also built on the Syntagma Square so the public could better admire the procession between the Royal Palace and the Cathedral. The newlyweds were related to most of the European dynasties, so representatives of all the royal houses of the continent were part of the festivities: Christian IX of Denmark (grandfather of the groom), Emperor William II of Germany (brother of the bride), the Prince of Wales (uncle of both groom and bride) and the Tsarevich of Russia (groom's cousin) were among the guests of honor. Naturally, Sophie's mother and sisters were also present at the ceremony.

In fact, the hosts and their retinues were so many in Athens that King George I could not receive all of them in his palace. He had to ask some members of the Greek high society to receive part of the guests in their mansions. Similarly, the King was obliged to borrow the horses and carriages of his subjects in order to transport all visitors during the festivities. In addition, George was forced to hastily buy dozens of additional liveries for the lackeys at the service of the guests.

Installation in Athens
In Athens, Constantine and Sophia settled in a small villa of French style located on Kifisias Avenue, while waiting for the Greek state to build a new home for them, the Crown Prince's Palace, located near the Royal Palace. The couple also ordered the building of another house on the royal estate of Tatoi because King George I refused to allow work to be undertaken in the main palace. In Athens, Constantine and Sophia lived a relatively simple life far removed from the protocol of other European courts, but life in Greece was often monotonous and Sophia lamented for any company, save only for the wives of the tobacco merchants.

Sophia had difficulties adjusting to her new life. However, she took up learning Modern Greek (and managed to become almost perfectly fluent in a few years) and used her many trips abroad to furnish and decorate her new home. Less than nine months after her marriage, on 19 July 1890, the Crown Princess gave birth to her first child, a slightly premature son who was named George after his paternal grandfather, but the birth went wrong and the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, almost choking him. Fortunately for the mother and child, the German midwife sent by the Dowager Empress Victoria to help her daughter in childbirth managed to resolve the situation and no tragic consequences occurred.

Conversion to Orthodoxy
After the birth of her eldest son, Sophia decided to embrace the faith of her subjects and convert to the Orthodox faith. Having requested and received the blessing of the Empress Dowager and Queen Victoria, the Crown Princess informed her in-laws of her intention and asked Queen Olga for instruction in Orthodoxy. The Greek royal family was delighted by the news, because the announcement of the conversion would be popular among the Greeks but King George insisted that Germanus II, Metropolitan of Athens and head of the autocephalous Church of Greece, would instruct Sophie in the Orthodox faith, rather than his wife. Of Russian origin, Queen Olga was considered by some Greek nationalists as an "agent of the Pan-Slavism" and the King therefore preferred that Germanus II would guarantee the task that could otherwise create difficulties for the Crown.

Though the news of her conversion was greeted calmly by most members of her family, Sophia feared the reaction of her brother William II, who took his status as Head of the Prussian Union of Churches very seriously and hated disobedience more than anything. Sophia and Constantine took a trip to Germany for the occasion of the wedding of her sister Viktoria to Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe in November 1890. The Crown Princess personally announced to her brother her intentions to change her religion. As expected, the news strongly displeased the Emperor and his wife, the very pious Augusta Victoria. The Empress even tried to dissuade her sister-in-law to convert, triggering a heated argument between the two women. Augusta later claimed that this caused her to go into premature labor, and deliver her sixth child, Prince Joachim, too early. William, meanwhile, was so angry that he threatened Sophia with exclusion from the Prussian royal family. Pressed by her mother to appear conciliatory, Sophia ended up writing a letter to her brother explaining the reasons for her conversion but the Emperor would not listen, and for three years he forbade his sister to enter Germany. Upon receiving his reply Sophie sent a telegram to her mother: "Received answer. Keeps to what he said in Berlin. Fixes it to three years. Mad. Never mind."

Sophia officially converted on 2 May 1891; however, the imperial sentence was ultimately never implemented. Nevertheless, relations between William and Sophia were permanently marked by Sophia's decision. Indeed, the Emperor was an extremely resentful man and he never stopped making his sister pay for her disobedience.

Social work
Throughout her life in Greece, Sophia was actively involved in social work and helping the underprivileged. Following in the footsteps of Queen Olga, she led various initiatives in the field of education, soup kitchens and development of hospitals and orphanages. In 1896, the Crown Princess also founded the Union of Greek Women, a particularly active organization in the field of assistance to refugees from the Ottoman Empire. Fascinated by arboriculture and concerned by the fires that regularly ravaged the country, Sophia was also interested in the reforestation. In addition, she was one of the founders of the Greek Animal Protection Society.

However, it was during wartime that Sophie showed the most resilience. In 1897, when the Thirty Days' War broke out, Sophia and other female members of the royal family actively worked with the Greek Red Cross in order to help wounded soldiers. On the Thessalian front, the Crown Princess founded field hospitals, visited the wounded and even directly administered care for victims of the fighting. Sophia also facilitated the arrival of English nurses in Greece and even participated in the training of young women volunteers to provide assistance to wounded soldiers.

The involvement of Sophia and her mother-in-law in the aid to the victims of fighting (either of Greek or Turkish origin) was so active that it elicited admiration from other European courts. As a reward for their work, both women were decorated with the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria, in December 1897. Unfortunately for the Crown Princess, her help for the wounded soldiers was less appreciated in Greece, where the population blamed the royal family, and especially Constantine, who was commander-in-chief of the Greek army in Thessaly, for the loss against the Ottomans.

Consequences of the War of Thirty Days
After the Thirty Days' War, a powerful anti-monarchical movement developed in Greece and Sophia herself was not immune to criticism. Always eager to punish his sister for her disobedience, Emperor William II of Germany openly supported the Ottoman Empire during the conflict and agreed to offer his mediation after being begged by his sister, his mother and his grandmother. He demanded that Greece agree to humiliating conditions in exchange for his intervention and the population believed that he did so with the consent of his sister.

However Sophia was not the only victim of popular condemnation. In fact, it was openly discussed in Athens that the Crown Prince should be sent before a military court to punish him for the national defeat and depose George I as was previously done with his predecessor Otto I. Several weeks after the signing of the peace treaty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, the situation became so tense that the sovereign was a subject of an assassination attempt when he traveled in an open carriage with his daughter, Princess Maria, but George I defended himself so bravely that he recovered at least some estimation from his subjects.

In these difficult conditions, Constantine and Sophia choose to live some time abroad. In 1898, they were established in Kronberg, and then in Berlin. There Constantine resumed his military training with General Colmar von der Goltz and for a year, he received the command of a Prussian division. To mark their reconciliation, Emperor William II also appointed Sophia as colonel-in-chief of the 3rd (Queen Elisabeth) Guards Grenadiers regiment of the Imperial Guard.

The couple returned to Greece in 1899 and the government of Georgios Theotokis appointed Constantine as inspector-general of the army. This promotion, however, caused some controversy among the army, which still considered the Crown Prince as the main person responsible for the defeat in 1897.

Family deaths
Back in Greece with her husband, the Crown Princess resumed her charity work. However, the health of both her mother and English grandmother deeply concerned her. The Empress Dowager of Germany was indeed suffering from breast cancer, which caused her extreme suffering. As for the Queen of the United Kingdom, she was approaching the age of eighty and her family knew that the end was close but the last years of her reign were marked by the Second Boer War, during which the United Kingdom suffered terrible losses facing the Afrikaner resistance. Sophia was concerned that the difficulties suffered by the British in South Africa would undermine the already fragile health of her grandmother.

Queen Victoria finally died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 22 January 1901 in Osborne House. Very affected by the death of the sovereign, Sophia traveled to the United Kingdom for her funeral and attended a religious ceremony in her honor in Athens with the rest of the Greek royal family.

A few months later, in the summer of 1901, Sophie went to Friedrichshof to look after her mother, whose health continued to decline. Five months pregnant, the Crown Princess knew that the Dowager Empress was dying and, with her sisters Viktoria and Margaret, she accompanied her until her last breath on 5 August. In the space of seven months Sophia lost two of her closest relatives. However, her new maternity helped keep her from feeling sorry for herself.

Goudi coup and its consequences
In Greece, political life remained volatile throughout the first years of the 20th century and the Megali Idea continued to be a central concern of the population. In 1908, the Cretan authorities unilaterally proclaimed the attachment of their island to the Kingdom of Greece but for fear of Turkish reprisals, the Greek government refused to recognize the annexation. In Athens, the pusillanimity of the King and government was shocking, particularly to the military. On 15 August 1909, a group of officers gathered in the "Military League" (Στρατιωτικός Σύνδεσμος) and organized the so-called Goudi coup. While declaring to be monarchists, members of the League, led by Nikolaos Zorbas, asked, among other things, for the sovereign to expel his son from the army. Officially, this was to protect the Crown Prince from the jealousies that could arise from his friendship with some soldiers but the reality was quite different: officers continued to hold the Crown Prince responsible for the 1897 defeat.

The situation became so tense that George I's sons had to resign from their military posts to save their father the shame of having to expelled them. In September, the Crown Prince, his wife and their children also chose to leave Greece and seek refuge in Germany at Friedrichshof, now owned by the Princess Margaret of Prussia. Meanwhile, in Athens, discussions began in some circles about dethroning the House of Glücksburg to establishing a republic or replacing the sovereign with either a bastard son of Otto I, a foreign prince or with Prince George, with Sophia as regent.

In December 1909, Colonel Zorbas, head of the Military League, pressured George I to appoint him as the head of the government in place of Prime Minister Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis. The sovereign refused but the government underwent reforms which favored the military. The staff was reorganized and supporters of the Crown Prince, including Ioannis Metaxas, were expelled. At the same time, a French army mission was called to reorganize the Greek army, which threatened both Sophia and her husband, as they helped develop republican ideas within the military.

Despite these reforms, some members of the Military League continued to oppose the government in order to take power. They then traveled to Crete to meet the prominent Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos, and offered him the post of Prime Minister of Greece. However the Cretan leader did not want to appear in Greece to be supported by the army and convinced them to arrange for new elections. In March 1910, the king eventually called for elections and Venizelos and his supporters came to power. For the royal family, this was a difficult time.

However, Venizelos did not want to weaken the Crown. To show that he did not obey the army, he restored the members of the royal family to their military duties and the Crown Prince thus again became inspector-general of the army. Back in Greece on 21 October 1910, after over a year of exile, Sophia nevertheless remained very suspicious of the new government and the militia. She refused any contact with Venizelos, blaming him as partly responsible for the humiliation suffered by the royal family. The Princess also had problems with her father-in-law, whom she accused of having been weak during the crisis.

Nurse during the First Balkan War
After the arrival of Venizelos in power, the Greek army was modernized and equipped with the support of French and British officers. New warships were also ordered by the navy. The aim of the modernization was to make the country ready for a new war against the Ottoman Empire but to defeat the enemy and achieve the Megali Idea, Greece needed allies. That was why, under the initiative of the new Prime Minister, Greece signed alliances with its neighbors and participated in the creation of the Balkan League in June 1912. Thus, when Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 8 October 1912, they were joined less than ten days later by Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. This was the beginning of the First Balkan War. While the Crown Prince and his brothers took command of Greek troops, Queen Olga, Sophia, and her sisters-in-law (Marie Bonaparte, Elena Vladimirovna of Russia and Alice of Battenberg) took in charge the aid to wounded soldiers and refugees. In one month, the princesses collected 80,000 garments for the military and gathered around them doctors, nurses and medical equipment. The Queen and Crown Princess also opened a public subscription in order to create new hospitals in Athens and on the front. Very active, the princesses did not just stay in the rear areas but also went to the center of the military operations. Queen Olga and Sophia visited Larissa and Elassona, while Alice made long stays in Epirus and Macedonia. Meanwhile, Elena directed an ambulance-train and Marie Bonaparte set up a hospital ship that connected Thessaloniki to the capital.

The war was an opportunity for the princesses to prove themselves useful to their adopted country but it also exacerbated rivalries within the royal family. Conflict began due to Sophia's jealousy of her cousin and sister-in-law Alice. In fact, a heated argument between the two young women erupted after Alice sent, without requesting permission from Sophia, nurses dependent on the Crown Princess to Thessaloniki. One seemingly innocuous event provoked a real discomfort within the family and Queen Olga was shocked when Sophia's attitude was supported by her husband.

Marital problems and private life
Sophia and Constantine's marriage was harmonious during the first years. However, faithfulness was not the greatest quality of the Crown Prince and his wife soon had to deal with his numerous extramarital affairs. Initially shocked by his betrayal, Sophia soon followed the example of her mother-in-law and condoned the behavior of her husband. From 1912, however, the couple became noticeably separated. At that time, Constantine began an affair with Countess Paola von Ostheim (née Wanda Paola Lottero), an Italian stage actress who had recently divorced from Prince Hermann of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach; this relationship lasted until Constantine's death.

When Sophia gave birth to her sixth and last child, a daughter named Katherine, on 4 May 1913, a persistent gossip stated that the child was the result of her own affairs. The rumors, true or false, did not affect Constantine, who easily recognized his paternity.

In private, the Crown Princely couple communicated in English and it was mainly in this language that they raised their children, who grew up in a loving and warm atmosphere in the middle of a cohort of tutors and British nannies. Like her mother, Sophia inculcated in her offspring the love for the United Kingdom and for several weeks every year, the family spent time in Great Britain, where she visited the beaches of Seaford and Eastbourne. However, the summer vacations of the family were spent not only in Friedrichshof with the Empress Dowager, but also in Corfu and Venice, where the Greek royal family went aboard the yacht Amphitrite.

Assassination of George I and Second Balkan War
The First Balkan War ended in 1913 with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Montenegrin coalition. The Kingdom of Greece was greatly expanded after the conflict but disagreements soon arose between the allied powers: Greece and Bulgaria competed for possession of Thessaloniki and its surrounding region.

To affirm the sovereignty of the Greeks over the main city of Macedonia, George I moved to the city soon after its conquest by the Crown Prince, on 8 December 1912. During his long stay in the city, the King went out every day to walk unescorted in the streets, as he had become accustomed to doing in Athens. On 18 March 1913 a Greek anarchist named Alexandros Schinas shot him in the back from a distance of two paces while he was walking in Thessaloniki near the White Tower.

Sophia was in Athens when she learned of the murder of her father-in-law, the king. Now, as Queen Consort of the Hellenes, the responsibility fell upon her to break the news of the murder to her mother-in-law. Together with her eldest daughter, Princess Helen, both comforted the now Dowager Queen, who received the news stoically. The next day, members of the royal family who were present in the capital went to Thessaloniki. Arriving in the Macedonian city, they visited the scene of the murder and collected the remains of the King to escort them back to Athens, where he was buried at Tatoi.

In this difficult context, the death of George I sealed the possession of Thessaloniki to Greece. Still, the Second Balkan War broke out in June 1913 over the division of Macedonia between the former allies of the first conflict. Victorious again, Greece came out of this war considerably enlarged, with the prestige of King Constantine I and Queen Sophia also increased.

Private life
After their accession to the throne, Constantine and Sophia continued to lead the simple lifestyle that they had enjoyed during their time as heirs. They spent their free time practising botany, which was their common passion, and transformed the gardens of the New Royal Palace on the English model.

The couple was very close to other members of the royal family, especially Prince Nicholas. Every Tuesday, the King and Queen dined with him and his wife Elena, and on Thursdays, they returned the visit with the royal couple at the Royal Palace.

Outbreak of World War I
At the outbreak of World War I on 4 August 1914 Sophia was in England at Eastbourne with several of her children while her husband and their daughter Helen were the only representatives of the dynasty still present in Athens. However, given the gravity of events, the Queen quickly returned to Greece, where she was soon joined by the rest of the royal family.

While the greater European states entered into the conflict one by one, Greece officially proclaimed its neutrality. Being grandchildren of the so-called "Father-in-law and Grandmother of Europe" (as Christian IX of Denmark and Queen Victoria respectively were known), Constantine and Sophia were closely related to the monarchs of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. The King and Queen were aware that Greece was already weakened by the Balkan Wars and was not ready to participate in a new conflict. However, the population did not share the opinion of the sovereigns. Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, whose great diplomatic skills had been greatly acknowledged at the London Conference of 1912-1913, especially by David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, knew that Greece's newly acquired dominions were in a precarious state, so Greece had to participate in the war with the Entente Cordiale in order to safeguard its winnings from the Second Balkan War. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria and even Romania had aligned themselves with Germany and, if Germany won the war, it would most certainly be at Greece's expense, given that Bulgaria's and the Ottoman Empire's winnings in land would inevitably come from Greek lands acquired in 1913, since both countries, greatly angered at the loss of Macedonia, were looking to overthrow the Treaty of Bucharest. Indeed, the country was in a dire state, led by a weak Germanophile King and his manipulative Queen to destruction and civil war.

Things got complicated when the Triple Entente engaged in the Gallipoli Campaign in February 1915. Wanting to release the Greek populations of Asia Minor from Ottoman rule, Constantine I was at first ready to offer his support to the Allies and bring his country into the war. However, the King faced the opposition of his Staff and, in particular, Ioannis Metaxas, who threatened to resign if Greece entered the war. The country did not have the means, even though the Allies offered great advantages for Greece in return for its participation. Constantine I was a great Germanophile; he had been educated in Germany, was almost raised as a German and admired immensely the Kaiser. The King had no particular desire to bring the country into war, and so he became a staunch supporter of neutrality. Constantine I therefore desisted, causing the wrath of Venizelos, who saw his country being in great peril because of the King. Because of Constantine I's actions, the Prime Minister handed over his resignation in 1915 (even after he won twice the elections held on the subject of war). A royal government then emerged. However, Venizelos was proven right on 25 May 1916, when the royal Greek government of Athens permitted the surrender of the Fort Roupel to the Germans and their Bulgarian allies as a counterbalance to the Allied forces that had been established in Thessaloniki. The German-Bulgarian troops then proceeded to occupy most of eastern Macedonia without resistance, resulting in the massacre of the Greek population there. This act led to the outbreak of a revolt of Venizelist army officers in Thessaloniki and the establishment of the Provisional Government of National Defence under Entente auspices there, opposed to the official government of Athens and Constantine I, cementing the so-called "National Schism".

Weakened by all these events, Constantine I became seriously ill after this crisis. Suffering from pleurisy aggravated by a pneumonia, he remained in bed for several weeks and nearly died. In Greece, public opinion was outraged by a rumour, spread by Venizelists, who said that the King was not sick but was in fact wounded with a knife by Sophia during an argument where she wanted to force him to go to war alongside her brother. Certainly the Queen kept a frequent communication with her brother. In the words of G. Leon, "She remained a German, and Germany's interests were placed above those of her adopted country which meant little to her. Actually she never had any sympathy for the Greek people". The Queen was also suspected to be the "power behind the throne." Various sources from the period-whose diaries, journals and extensive correspondence have been a subject of great study in Greece-note that Sophia used to hide behind a curtain in her husband's apartments during Cabinet meetings and private audiences with the King, in order to be informed on the state of affairs. When the King's health declined a ship was sent to the Island of Tinos to seek the miraculous Icon of the Annunciation which supposedly heals the sick. While Constantine I had already received the last sacraments, he partly recovered his health after kissing the icon. However, his situation remained worrying and he needed surgery before he could resume his duties. Relieved by the recovery of her husband, Sophia offered then, by way of ex-voto, a sapphire to enrich the icon.

During the King's illness period, the Triple Entente continued to put pressure on Greece to go to war alongside them. Dimitrios Gounaris, successor of Venizelos as Prime Minister, proposed the intervention of his country in the conflict in exchange for the protection of the Allies against an eventual attack of Bulgaria. However, the Triple Entente, although eager to form an alliance with them, refused the agreement.

Rupture with Venizelos
In June 1915, legislative elections gave victory to the Venizelists. A month later, Constantine I, still convalescent, reassumed his official duties and eventually called on Venizelos to head the Cabinet on 16 August. In September, Bulgaria entered the war alongside the Central Powers and attacked Serbia, ally of Greece since 1913. Venizelos asked the King to proclaim a general mobilization, which he refused. However, to avoid a new political crisis, Constantine I finally proclaimed mobilization while making it clear that this was a purely defensive measure. On 3 October, in order to force the King to react, the Prime Minister called on the Allied Powers to occupy the port of Thessaloniki but Constantine I left the city when the French, Italian and British forces landed in the city. The break was now final between Venizelos and the royal family. As for the Allied governments, the attitude of Constantine and Sophia appeared as a betrayal and they appeared as such in the newspapers of the Triple Entente. The French press accused the Queen of regularly visiting the beaches of Phalerum in order to supply German submarines with fuel.

It must be said that by refusing to go to war, Greece prevented the Franco-British troops of helping Serbia, whose armies soon found themselves overwhelmed by the Austro-Bulgarian coalition, and it made even more uncertain an Allied victory in the Dardanelles. In retaliation, the Triple Entente ordered Greece to demobilize its army while martial law was proclaimed in Thessaloniki and a blockade was imposed on the Greeks.

The conflict between the King and Venizelos culminated in the so-called National Schism, which was essentially a battle between those who wanted things to remain as they were and those who favoured reform; between conservatism and cosmopolitanism; between the old world and the new.

The withdrawal of British troops from the Dardanelles in December 1915 reinforced the confidence of a part of the "old Greece" (meaning the conservative parts of the country, namely around Attica and Peloponnese that constituted the original size of the Greek state in 1830). Inhabitants of those areas saw with suspicion and resentment the enlargement of the Greek state with new lands. This "new Greece" was composed of a more cosmopolitan and broadly educated populace, while "old Greece" was essentially a poorer, debt-ridden area, still largely relying on agriculture. In the eyes of those in "old Greece," the Greeks living in the new lands were strangers, almost foreigners. Thus, "old Greece" xenophobia was exploited by the King and the church for propaganda purposes in order to get rid of the liberal government of Venizelos. In 1915 the Prime Minister handed over his resignation in protest over the King's inaction regarding general mobilisation. However, a by-election followed in the first half of 1915, from which Venizelos again emerged victorious, having the support of "new Greece" (namely the lands awarded to Greece by the Treaty of Bucharest) and of the more liberal, affluent and well-educated elements of "old Greece" society. However, that was not what the King wanted and he moved to have the Prime Minister overthrown, even if his actions meant defying the Constitution. Venizelos was again forced to resign (twice in 1915). In protest, Venizelos and his supporters refused to participate in the poll and declared that the newly elected Greek parliament was illegal. A new government, loyal to the King, emerged.

Assassination attempts
From that point on, the Greek government followed a policy more favorable to the Triple Alliance. The population protested against the transfer of the Serbian army to Corfu and then to Thessaloniki. Orders were given that officers at the borders must not oppose a Bulgarian advance into the country, which took place on 27 May 1916. Finally, in April 1916, Constantine I symbolically proclaimed the annexation of Northern Epirus to Greece in response to the Italian intervention into Albania. Now considered enemies of the Triple Entente, the royal couple faced increasingly violent opposition. The French developed various plots to kidnap or assassinate of the sovereigns. On 14 July 1916, a mysterious fire (probably a deliberate act of arson set by agents of Paris) broke out in the forest surrounding Tatoi. In the confusion, Sophia saved her youngest daughter, Princess Katherine, and ran over 2 km into the woods with the child in her arms. Several members of the royal family, including Constantine I himself, were wounded and the residence of the rulers was largely destroyed by the fire, which lasted 48 hours. Above all, 16 (or 18, depending on sources) soldiers and other members of the palace staff were killed.

After these events, the attitude of the royal family in regard to Germany changed considerably. Between December 1916 and February 1917, the Queen, who had been less of a Germanophile than her husband, sent several telegrams to her brother, asking him when the troops of the Centrals would be able to intervene in Macedonia. However, Sophia still had some resentment against the Emperor because of his anger at the time of her marriage and her conversion to Orthodoxy; but the violation of Greece's neutrality by the Triple Entente and the threats against the life of her husband and children gradually changed her views against the Allies.

National Schism and pressures of the Triple Entente
In October 1916, Eleftherios Venizelos set up in Thessaloniki, where he organized a provisional government against the one led by Spyridon Lambros in Athens. This was the beginning of the so-called National Schism. (Εθνικός Διχασμός, Ethnikos Dikhasmos). Meanwhile, a Franco-British fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet, occupied the bay of Salamis to put pressure on Athens, while various ultimatums were sent, mainly concerning the disarmament of his army. With the blockade, the supply of the capital was increasingly difficult and famine began. Sophia redoubled her efforts to help the poor. With the Patriotic League of Greek Women, she managed to distribute 10,000 meals a day, as well as clothing, blankets, medicines and milk for children. Still, the situation became even more difficult.

On 1 December 1916, Constantine I finally agreed to the French demands, and soldiers of the Triple Entente landed in Athens to seize guns promised by the sovereign two months earlier. But secretly a group of Greek reservists mobilized and fortified Athens. The French were met by heavy fire and many were killed; the event was called by the local press of the time as the "Greek Vespers". After this, the king congratulated both the Minister of War and General Dousmanis.

The Triple Entente quickly reacted to this attack. The French fleet bombarded the royal palace in Athens, forcing Sophia and her children to take refuge in the castle cellars for several hours. Above all, the government of Aristide Briand offered to depose Constantine I and replaced him by his younger brother, Prince George.

However, Russia and Italy refused to intervene because of fears of Greek claims on Asia Minor and the blood ties between Constantine I and Tsar Nicholas II.

Dethronement and family separation
With the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the deposition of Nicholas II, Constantine and Sophia lost the last of their supporters in the Triple Entente. Thus, on 10 June 1917 Charles Jonnart, the Allied High Commissioner, asked the Greek Government for the abdication of the King and his replacement by another prince. The Diadochos George was also considered a pro-German. Under the threat of an invasion of 10,000 troops in Piraeus, Constantine I relinquished power in favor of his second son, Prince Alexander. Nevertheless, Constantine refused to abdicate. He explained that Alexander should be considered a kind of regent in charge of the throne until the return of the legitimate monarch.

On 11 June, the royal family secretly left the Royal Palace, surrounded by a group of loyalists, and arrived at Tatoi. The next day, Constantine, Sophia and five of their children left Greece from the port of Oropos, taking the road to exile. This was the last time Sophia saw her second son, now proclaimed king as Alexander I. Venizelists prohibited any contact between the new sovereign and the rest of the royal family.

Life in Switzerland
After crossing the Ionian Sea and Italy, Sophia and her family settled in Switzerland, mainly between the cities of St. Moritz, Zürich and Lucerne. In exile, the rulers were soon followed by almost all the members of the royal family who left Greece on the return of Venizelos as head of the government and as Greece entered the war at the side of the Triple Entente. In addition, the financial position of the royal family was precarious and Constantine I, haunted by a deep sense of failure, soon fell ill. In 1918, he contracted Spanish flu and was again close to death.

Already concerned about the health of her husband, Sophia was devastated by the prohibition against contact with her second son. In fact, in Athens, Alexander I was entirely cut off from his family and the government formally prevented him from communicating with his parents. Even during a short stay in Paris in May 1920, guards closely monitored Constantine's activity. When Sophia telephoned him at his hotel, a man coldly answered stating "His Majesty is sorry but he can't answer the phone".

With the end of World War I and the signing of the Treaties of Neuilly and Sèvres, the Kingdom of Greece achieved significant territorial gains in Thrace and Anatolia. However, the country remained unstable and tensions between Venizelos and the exiled royals continued. The decision of Alexander I to marry Aspasia Manos rather than a European princess displeased both the Head of the government and the King's parents. Very attached to social conventions, Sophia condemned what she saw as a mésalliance while the Prime Minister saw in this marriage a lost opportunity to get closer to Great Britain.

Death of Alexander I
On 2 October 1920, King Alexander I was bitten by a pet monkey as he walked on the royal estate of Tatoi. His wounds quickly became infected and he suffered from a high fever and sepsis. On 19 October, he became delirious and called out for his mother to come to his bedside. However, the Greek government refused to allow Sophia to return to Greece; they feared that the loyalists would benefit from the presence of the Queen in Athens to organize action against them.

Sophia begged the government to allow her entry in the country for what would likely be a last visit with her son. Aware that only her mother-in-law still found favor with Venizelists, she eventually asked Dowager Queen Olga to go to Athens to take care of Alexander. After several days of negotiations, Olga obtained permission to return to Greece. But she was delayed by rough seas and arrived 12 hours after the death of her grandson, on 25 October.

Two days later, the remains of the young King were buried in the royal crypt of Tatoi. Again, the government banned the exiled royals from entering the country and the Dowager Queen was the only member of the family to attend the funeral. The loss of her son and the impossibility to go to his funeral deeply affected Sophia. Many observers noticed the sadness that perpetually showed on the Queen's face after this loss.

Fall of Venizelos and Olga's regency
In Athens, the death of Alexander I created a serious institutional crisis. Always opposed to the return of Constantine I and 'Diadochos George' to Greece, the government of Eleftherios Venizelos offered the throne to Prince Paul, the third son of the deposed sovereign. However, he refused to ascend the throne before his father and his elder brother unless a referendum appointed him as the new Head of State.

The situation of the Venizelists was already precarious after the difficulties faced by the country during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Supporters of King Constantine I therefore experienced a resurgence of popularity and Venizelos was defeated in the parliamentary elections of November 1920. The return of monarchists to power led to the resignation of Venizelist administrative staff and on 17 November Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis was appointed regent after the death of Alexander I, chose to resign. The new Prime Minister Dimitrios Rallis, therefore asked Dowager Queen Olga to assume the regency until the return of her son, on 19 December 1920. For about a month, she was the head of the Greek kingdom but her role was roughly limited to preparing for the restoration of Constantine I.

In the meantime, in Switzerland, the royal family was preparing for the wedding of two of their children with children of King Ferdinand I of Romania. A few weeks before the death of Alexander I, 'Diadochos George' became engaged to Princess Elisabeth of Romania, while Princess Helen of Greece had secretly been engaged to Crown Prince Carol of Romania since 1913. Sophia was satisfied with her son's upcoming wedding, but she disapproved of her daughter's romance with the Romanian Crown Prince. Still saddened by the death of Alexander, the Queen did not want to lose another child. Sophia had no confidence in the future Carol II, whose marriage and divorce from Zizi Lambrino had already shocked her.

Return to Greece
The return of Constantine I and Sophia to Athens on 19 December 1920, was accompanied by large demonstrations of joy. Everywhere in the streets, portraits of Venizelos were pulled and replaced by those of the royal family. A huge crowd surrounded the royal couple in the streets of the capital and, after returning to the Royal Palace, they had to appear repeatedly on the balcony to greet the people who cheered them. However, the presence of the sovereigns in Greece did not bring the expected peace. In fact, the former allies did not forgive the King and Queen's attitude during World War I and they were not ready to provide their support. The antipathy of the great powers toward Constantine I and Sophia was evident on the occasion of the marriage, in Athens, of Princess Helen and Crown Prince Carol of Romania. Present at the wedding, the ambassador of Great Britain and his wife pointedly refused to salute the Greek King and Queen while clearly showing such respect to Queen Marie of Romania. For Sophia, the snub was more difficult to bear because she had always been on good terms with the United Kingdom representatives before the deposition of Constantine I and she continued to nurture loving feelings for the country of her mother.

The main source of joy for Sophia after her return to Greece was the birth of her granddaughter Alexandra, on 25 March 1921. Although initially opposed to Alexander's marriage with Aspasia Manos, the Queen welcomed their daughter with delight and pressed both her husband and eldest son to give her granddaughter the status and titles reserved to members of the royal family.

Great Disaster
After initial success, the situation of the Greek army was increasingly precarious in Anatolia. Constantine I decided to travel there in May 1921 to support the morale; however he wasn't the dynamic Commander-in-chief that led his country to victory in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Seriously diminished by illness, he had to return to Greece in September, which was perceived as a real military desertion by some. As for Sophia, she could do more than support her husband and reassume her nursing work with wounded soldiers.

The Greco-Turkish War continued until the Greek defeat of Sakarya in August–September 1921, and the siege and burning of Smyrna (now İzmir) by the Turks in September 1922. After these events, the country plunged into a deep political and moral crisis. While Mustafa Kemal and his armies gradually reconquered Anatolia and east Thrace, thousands of Greeks were murdered and others fled from Asia Minor to find refuge in Greece. This was called the "Great Disaster", which was definitive a few months later with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923).

Abdication of Constantine I
In response to the military defeat by the Turks, a part of the Greek army, commanded by General Nikolaos Plastiras, revolted on 11 September 1922 (on the Julian calendar, 24 September on the Gregorian calendar in use in the rest of the world). They demanded the abdication of Constantine I and the dissolution of the Hellenic Parliament. Having consulted his friend, General Ioannis Metaxas, the King abdicated three days later on 27 September in favor of his eldest son, who succeeded him on the throne under the name of George II.

Second exile and concerns for Greece
To ensure their security and stabilize the throne of their son, Constantine I and Sophia once again chose to take the path of exile. On 30 October 1922 the deposed royal couple, Princesses Irene and Katherine and Prince Nicholas with his family, went again to the port of Oropos to leave their country but, contrary to what happened in 1917, few followers awaited them this time before their departure into exile.

On board the Greek steamboat SS Patris, the royal family arrived in Sicily and moved to the Villa Hygeia in Palermo. The Greek political situation remained a source of concern for the exiles. In fact, in Athens, the called Trial of the Six led to the execution for high treason of former Prime Ministers Petros Protopapadakis, Nikolaos Stratos and Dimitrios Gounaris and Generals Georgios Baltatzis, Nikolaos Theotokis and Georgios Hatzianestis, all accused of responsibility for the defeat against Turkey. Above all, the life of Prince Andrew, brother of Constantine I, was also threatened in November–December 1922 and only the intervention from foreign governments commuted his sentence from death to exile.

Death of Constantine I and deposition of George II
Increasingly depressed by the events that had shaken Greece and sick with arteriosclerosis, Constantine I developed a deep depression. He then remained sometimes hours without speaking, staring into space. Faced with this situation, Sophia's anxiety (already bigger by the fate of George II and other members of the royal family who remained in Greece), only increased. The Queen and her husband therefore made the decision to leave Sicily and settled in Florence. However, Constantine I died of a brain hemorrhage shortly before their departure, on 11 January 1923, and Sophia found herself even more isolated than she was previously.

After the death of her husband, Sophia wanted to repatriate his remains to be buried in Tatoi but the Greek government refused, with George II being unable to do anything. In fact, the situation of the new King was increasingly precarious and at the end, he himself went into exile in Romania a few months after the death of his father, on 19 December 1923. The republic was then proclaimed in Greece on 25 March 1924 and Sophia and the other members of the royal family were stripped of their Hellenic nationality. However, the Greek royals maintained their Danish titles since George I ascended to the Greek throne in 1863 and King Christian IX of Denmark almost immediately gave them Danish passports.

Last years

Sophia, now Dowager Queen, left Southern Italy with her daughters Irene and Katherine and moved to Tuscany, in the Villa Bobolina of Fiesole. From 1924 to 1927, the three women were joined by Princesses Aspasia and Alexandra, much to Sophia's delight, because she was very attached to her granddaughter. In 1930, Princess Helen also came to live with her mother after her disastrous marriage with King Carol II of Romania ended in divorce. During summer vacations, the Dowager Queen had the opportunity to see her grandson Prince Michael of Romania, when he came to visit his mother.

Surrounded by her family, Sophia found some stability but, convinced that Greece would not remain a republic forever, refused to acquire the villa where she settled. Released from any official position, she had now more freedom to travel. She made frequent trips to Germany, where she reunited with her sister Margaret, but also to Great Britain, after having obtained the permission of King George V. The Dowager Queen also witnessed several strong moments in the life of the European elite. In 1929, she went to Doorn in the Netherlands for the 70th birthday of her brother, the former Emperor William II, whom she had not seen since 1914.

In her older years, Sophie became increasingly religious. She remained orthodox, but also attended Anglican offices when she had the chance. The Queen Dowager was also interested in the Protestant literature, especially in the works of the Episcopalian pastor Samuel Shoemaker (particularly Religion That Works and Twice Born Ministers) and the Presbyterian Rev. James Reid (In Touch With Christ). Finally, she had a close correspondence with the Anglican pastor R. W. Cole, whom she met in Birchington, and spent long hours praying.

Illness, death and burial
Sick for many years, Sophia saw her condition worsen from 1930, which forced her to go to a hospital in Frankfurt to follow a treatment. Apparently recovered by December, she took full advantage of her strength and during 1931 she traveled to Great Britain, Bavaria and Venice. But in September, her condition deteriorated again and she had to return to Frankfurt, where she underwent surgery. It was during this time that the doctors diagnosed advanced cancer and they gave the Dowager Queen a few weeks to live. After the New Year celebrations of 1932, Sophia gradually stopped eating and her health declined rapidly. She finally died surrounded by her children in the hospital, on 13 January 1932.

Sophia's body was transferred to the castle of Friedrichshof, where she rested a few days before being sent to the Russian Church in Florence, where she was buried alongside her husband and mother-in-law. They stayed there for four years until the restoration of George II on the Greek throne in 1935.

After his restoration on the Greek throne, George II organized the repatriation of the remains of members of his family who died in exile. An important religious ceremony that brought together, for six days in November 1936, all members of the royal family still alive. Sophia's body was buried at the royal burial ground at Tatoi Palace, where she still rests today.

Archives
Sophia's letters to her sister Margaret are preserved in the Archive of the House of Hesse, which is kept in Fasanerie Palace in Eichenzell, Germany.

Literature

 * In The Athenians, the British journalist and writer Beverley Nichols tells the story of a young Englishwoman charged by the Secret Intelligence Service to assassinate King Constantine I during World War I. However, this spy novel, inspired by the survey conducted by the author in Greece after the restoration of the sovereign, was never released because Nichols' publishing house deemed it too compromising. The work, which was dedicated to Queen Sophia, only exists today in the form of manuscript.

Film and television

 * The role of Sophia is played by actress Olga Karlatos in the Greek film Eleftherios Venizelos of Pantelis Voulgaris (1980).
 * Sophia was also portrayed by Greek actress Antigoni Amanitou in the American mini-series of two episodes The First Olympics: Athens 1896, directed by Alvin Rakoff (1984).
 * Sophia was portrayed by English actress Sophie Trott in the British film Victoria & Abdul (2017).

Phaleristics

 * In 1936, the Order of Saints Olga and Sophia (Βασιλικό Οικογενειακό Τάγμα των Αγίων Όλγας και Σοφίας / Basilikon oikogeneiakon tagma ton agion Olgas kai Sophias) was established by King George II of Greece in the memory of his grandmother and mother.

Name of Avenue

 * In Athens, the Vasilissis Sofias Avenue (Λεωφόρος Βασιλίσσης Σοφίας) was named after Queen Sophia. This major artery, which begins at the intersection of Vasilissis Amalias Avenue and Panepistimiou Street and ends in the Alexandras, Kifisias and Mesogeion Avenues, had some of the major monuments of the Greek capital: the Old Royal Palace, the National Garden of Athens, the Byzantine and Christian Museum and the War Museum.

title: Sophia of Prussia


text:
London Positivist Society

The London Positivist Society was an atheistic philosophical, humanist, and political circle that met in London, England, between May 1867 and 1974. The conditions of membership originally included "emancipation from theology and metaphysics and the acceptance of Comte's views on science and society". The Society's members occupied themselves in applying the ideas of the philosophical school of Comtean positivism to current affairs of the day, including the movement for home rule in Ireland, the Second Boer War (which the Society opposed), the strikes of London trade unionists (which the society defended), Egyptian Independence (which the society supported), the Indian independence movement (which the Society supported) and defence of the Paris Commune. Among their writings was the 1896 pamphlet Positivist Comments on Public Affairs. The Society also supported the founding of the Sociological Society of London. In 1934, it was renamed the English Positivist Committee.

History
The society was founded by Richard Congreve (1818–1899) in 1867 as a philosophical and political body. By 1870, the group under Congreve was based at Chapel Street Hall in London. The barrister Frederic Harrison, who had met Congreve at Wadham College, Oxford, was a founding member, but he found it difficult to adhere to Congreve's rigid Comtism. In 1878 the group suffered a schism. That summer, Congreve dissolved the Society, for he wished to make sure everyone involved in the group advocated Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity. He had founded the 'Church of Humanity' in January 1859 and was dissatisfied with the reluctance of the society to support his cause. In 1878, the Society's members published a range of attacks on one another, including Congreve's Circular Addressed to all my Coreligionists, to all the Disciples of Auguste Comte; E.S. Beesly's Remarks on Dr Congreve's Circular; and John Henry Bridges' Appeal to English Positivists. Beesly, Bridges, Harrison, and Vernon Lushington, among others, carried on as the London Positivist Society, expanding the group's membership to 93 members by 1891. In 1881, London Positivist Society boasted a new home at Fleur-de-lis Court, off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, London. It was called Newton Hall after Sir Isaac Newton, who had first acquired it for the Royal Society Museum. Newton Hall became a popular Positivist center distinct from Congreve's Chapel Street Hall 'Church of Humanity' for the years to come. In 1883, the Newton Hall group formed a choir for positivist ceremonies, and they appointed Henry Holmes to compose a cantata of George Eliot's poem, 'The Choir Invisible' for these purposes.

Those who were elected members included, at one time or another, the barrister Frederic Harrison; the historian E. S. Beesly; the physicians Evan Buchanan Baxter and John Henry Bridges. Others affiliated to the group in some way included the sociologists Charles Booth, Patrick Geddes, Victor Branford, and Sybella Gurney; Henry Tompkins (1870–1954); Donald Fincham (1916–1969); George Henry Lewes (1817–1878); Frederick William Walsh (1879–1923), who had been paralysed in an industrial accident but whose mind remained sharp; Paul Juste Decours; and Benjamin Fossett Lock (honorary secretary of the Society 1880–1886), who resigned in 1886 over the Irish home rule debate.

In 1934 the London Positivist Society merged with the English Positivist Committee, taking the latter's name.

The Society's presidents included
 * Edward Spencer Beesly
 * Shapland Hugh Swinny (1857–1923), Society president 1901–1923; Swinny was a personal friend of several Indian nationalists, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

In 1878, the organization published a manifesto protesting the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Edward Spenser Beesly signed the manifesto, which was one page long, and believed that attacking the Afghans was unjust.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: London Positivist Society


text:
Tzu

Tzu or TZU may refer to the following:

 * TZU, an Australian hip-hop group
 * Tzu (poetry), a format of Chinese poetry
 * Chinese characters (han-tzu)
 * Courtesy name (tzu), a Chinese given name used later in life
 * Tzu (surname), the surname of the kings of Shang China

title: Tzu


text:
New Creek

New Creek is an 18.4 mi stream in eastern West Virginia, United States. It is the third major West Virginia tributary to the North Branch Potomac River. Via the Potomac, it is part of the watershed of Chesapeake Bay.

Course
New Creek rises on New Creek Mountain in northern Grant County and flows generally northeastwardly through western Mineral County, past the community of New Creek. It joins the North Branch of the Potomac at the city of Keyser.

History
The creek was named after Peter New, an area pioneer.

title: New Creek


text:
User:Jarcanist/Archive1

gender versus sex
From meriam webster: Main Entry: 1gen·der Pronunciation: 'jen-d&r Function: noun Etymology: Middle English gendre, from Middle French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender -- more at KIN

1 a : a subclass within a grammatical class (as noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics (as shape, social rank, manner of existence, or sex) and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms b : membership of a word or a grammatical form in such a subclass c : an inflectional form showing membership in such a subclass

2 a : SEX b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex

"Sex" is more specific. Historically, it was not synonomous with "gender." As a bit of a prescriptive grammarian, it rankles me to see the two confused.

I do not care to create an account to discuss it further. Wikipedia takes all types of input, including mine.

 * You're being an ass about this. It isn't a matter of being a prescriptive grammarian, and I am not confused about same. Sex and Gender are two very, very different things. Note I link off my home node to berdache (which I now realize is pejorative, but I digress). I think in the text affected, It is interesting to note that the sex of this character changed between movies and television series., that since we did not see a penis or a vagina and the Care Bears are anatomically barren, the gender of the creature changed. In fact, I can be a human male, or a potted flower, or a giant white whale, and have a gender that is unique to me. Be it male, female, berdache, or something else. The gender of the bear changed, not the sex. The latter would have been impossible. I would imagine (and I looked) that images from the actual movie are copyrighted and as such do not appear on the intarweb very much, but here is a reasonably good approximation of said rabbit. Sex change not possible, gender change entirely possible.

 * Lastly, perhaps to summarize it more clearly, as I've beaten around the, ahem, bush, somewhat here, is that gender is a role, and sex is a physical apparatus. You look at a Care Bear and you tell me which is possible to change, outside of fanfiction. Avriette 16:23, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

vfd/delete
LOL! I absolutely love your edit summary. :-) Okay, I don't exactly see the adjectives "uncooperative" and "childish" as applicable, but I agree it would have been nice if I had left a message for you.  I do apologize for not taking the time to give you that courtesy.  To be honest, though, I hadn't realized I had changed more than one.  I recall your name from the Arbiter article, where I eventually changed it from Speedy to VfD, but I didn't realize I had changed any other tags you submitted.  I had to go through my contributions to find the other one.  I'm sorry.  If I had realized I was changing multiple submissions by the same person, I probably would have left you a note.  I didn't realize it.  BTW, I agree with you about the amount of trivia (I still use the word "fancruft") in Wikipedia.  I don't envy you the job of cleaning up the Care Bear situation.  Happy editing.  SWAdair | Talk  06:55, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to wikipedia, the non-boilerplate version
Oh my! I love your advogato diary, and I love your edit summaries! Just a piece of advice: correcting Wikipedia braindeath by means of hand editing and VfDs is a hopeless activity. I honestly wouldn't bother with the star trekkies, etc., unless you have some backup (team of people, editing tools, policy) on your side. Charles Stewart 01:29, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * vi is my editing tool. as far as policy, we shall see. I'm starting on care bears now. That's a low-irritation target. the various trills may upset people, but that's a ways off. Avriette 22:59, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Howzit
Unfortunately, I don't have irc access. I (gasp) don't have online access at home, but I've been seriously considering RR. That way I could do something more productive at home than play Morrowind. :-) Anything you would like to ask, feel free to.  You can either leave it on my talk page or e-mail me at SWAdair@computermail.net (warning -- do not include the string "wiki" in the subject field or it will get filtered into my mailing list folder, which gets swamped).  I usually check e-mail about once a day and am pretty good about responding promptly.  SWAdair | Talk  03:53, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fancruft
Hey, just read some of your recent stuff in your diary with respect to fancruft, and if you haven't already, you should definitely check out Wikipedia talk: Fancruft. This subject understandably comes up a lot. My personal attitude is that, if there exists a group of related stub articles, they should be combined into a single, possibly worthwhile article; take a look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters for a good example. Originally each section of this article was its own article, which was quite annoying.

I understand that you might reject such content as being encyclopedia-worthy at all because of its limited scope and influence, but I tend to lean towards inclusionism and am embarassed to admit I wrote the original article on Vespene gas, so I suppose I can't really talk. Deco 05:37, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I just finished Care Bears. I wish you hadn't shown me Vespene gas, which also frightens me. However, I am suitably satiated from my carebears jihad that I will leave the wikipedia alone for a few days. Then I may have some content to add. I have some new pictures for USMC weapons systems that we don't have and are not copyrighted (gubbermint and all).

 * Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate your cleanup and if you think Vespene gas should go I would understand. I've conducted a number of efforts that mysteriously met violent opposition, such as changing the archaic British spelling "connexion" to "connection", but you have to edit for what you believe in. Keep up the good fight. Deco 02:56, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Blowing Shit Up...
Yeah. I do like blowing shit up. Consider it a private passion of mine. Avriette 21:55, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

...and other military topics
Hi Avriette and thanks for the note. Pointers for aircraft (including helos) are at WikiProject Aircraft, where you'll also find links to the category system and current standard layout for these articles. I standardised your CH-21 Shawnee article as an example.

While there are now some quite evolved standards for warships and aircraft, standards for weapon systems more generally are all over the shop. There seems to have been an effort at creating a navigational template for missiles, but it hasn't been widely rolled out, and perhaps was really only intended for general articles on categories of missile rather than specific systems anyway. Similarly, while a standard spec table for small arms was developed, it hasn't been implemented widely (and WikiProject Weaponry is now listed as inactive anyway).

There have been at least two attempts to develop a broad-based and consistent way to categorise weapons, but neither went very far.

Given the mess, at the moment I really only try to make sure that weapons articles are reasonably well-classified, and that aircraft weapon systems carry the template. I also list new aircraft articles here and standardise them when I get the time (currently bogged down in mid-February).

If you want to have a stab at it, some kind of consistency is desperately needed for weapons on Wikipedia. At the moment, it's pretty much a model of the worst aspects of collaborative editing, so it'll be a long-term project! Cheers --Rlandmann 03:07, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I have to say that I disagree very much with your re-edit of the Shawnee's page. It isn't particularly important, as the flying banana hasn't flown since 1964 outside of air shows. However, see the fa/18 (sorry, c/p) and you've got this fancy table on the right. I created the table for the shawnee from a "template" i had been using which I now realize that had been used from the weapons systems page -- the M203 (although of course, I used wikinotation instead of html) example. I like it a lot, and used it on, for example. the GAU-17, M14 (rifle) among others. It is a very standardized, almost "trading card" like format, from which it is easy to discern all aspects of the weapon, plane, whatever. I think the format of:

General Characteristics
....
 * Some Metric: Some Value

 * is just harder to read, and less attractive. It also is less machine parseable. Perhaps I should posit some RfC's.... I don't particularly see an F/A-18 Hornet being all that very different from an AGM-62 Walleye or a M101A1. I'm not sure why they should all have a different look and feel. 00:26, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Warnings
And let me tell you, politely, to fuck off. I'll edit what I fucking feel like editing. Save your threats for somebody who cares. Everyking 13:40, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Superbombs
Though I think that the category of Category:Superbombs is a little silly anyway, I can hardly see why Fat Man and Little Boy didn't qualify as them, in their time. Sure, they look pretty puny now compared to some of the H-bombs, but in 1945 they were pretty dang super. If it is just yields we are talking about, then MOAB shouldn't be on the chart at all with the Tsar Bomba. I don't get the logic. --Fastfission 04:30, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I figured somebody would take issue with it. See Ivy King for what a "super bomb" is compared to Little Boy. They weren't superbombs even for their time. At the time they were being detonated, much bigger and higher yield bombs were being developed. The reason BLU-82 belongs there and MOAB as well alongside Tsar Bomba is we are talking two entirely separate types of bombs. The Tsar Bomba was the biggest, meanest nuclear weapon ever built. The BLU-82 (and T-12) are incredibly destructive conventional weapons. Superbombs within their "division" if you will.Avriette 04:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re: the stub
Regardless of "Taiwan" being the prevalent common name for the country, "Taiwan" is only the main part of the territories that ROC administers. The entire process has been gone through serious discussion, and the decision was based on consensus. You may know I have been trying to differentiate Taiwan geography stubs from non-Taiwan-related ROC geography stubs. — Instantnood 10:11, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Like I am fond of saying in other places fuck them all. I can't understand it or tolerate it, but I am left with no choice. They'll just be the way they are, and one day they'll reach enlightenment. Avriette 20:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re: Danube Class Starship
To my knowledge, all of the text at the top and in the ship descriptions is original. The data given under the "Specifications" heading were mostly taken from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, but weren't structured there in the same way. I'd call it fair use. -- Djinn112 02:39, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem like "fair use" to me, but if you can cite something, I'll be glad to read it. Otherwise it seems like "verbatim copying." Avriette 02:40, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks and...
I wrote that stuff about Sternbach a while ago and never got around to submitting it. Thanks anyway, for the virtual kick in the pants that finally got me to post it. Anyway, if Danube class starship pisses you off, just wait until you see stuff like Springfield class starship and Merced class starship. Yes believe it or not, we do actually have entire pages on starship classes that have never appeared on screen, never been mentioned in dialogue; just invented by fans for starships that have never appeared on screen and only been briefly mentioned in dialogue. AlistairMcMillan 07:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Meant to add, you can find links to lots of other fancruft class starhips in the history of Template:Trekshipclass. If you think your sanity can take it. AlistairMcMillan 07:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New Jersey
please convert metrics to english units. 69.143.133.51 02:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Jake from Daria
Hi Alex: How are you? Thank you for your note on my user page. I did the page on Jake from Daria because that night I wasnt inspired to write about much else, and if you look at Daria, other people have written about other characters so I felt I had the green light to go ahead. I do hope that future generations appreciate my writings, and yours and everyone else's because that is precisely why this wikipedia is so lovable and enjoyable; we break away from Brittanica and other, normal encyclopedias in that we cover topics they certainly would never cover.

Apart from that, you were right about pointing out the "clear" situation. English isnt my first language, so I couldnt find a better word for the suit's color. But today I realized Ocean Blue is more like it and so I corrected it. BTW, Ive never seen a suit of that color either, that must be a cartoon writer's imagination invention!

Anyways, happy trails around wikipedia and I hope youre enjoying your experience here as much as I am!

Thank you and God bless you! Sincerely yours, "Antonio Mr. Glitter Shine Martin"

Superfluous Clarfication?
Is it really necessary to add that it is a video game and hence fiction? I have never seen anything related to Star Wars that wasn't fictional, and should any one follow the link provided, it makes that abundantly. Frankly, your edit seems a little silly and pedantic. -- Maru Dubshinki 04:32 PM Saturday, 02 April 2005
 * It is silly to put entries about Star Wars characters into the wikipedia. That, however, is really another discussion. See Template:Fiction. This is a recurring problem in the wikipedia: fiction is presented as being somehow factual. With the vast networks of fictional characters and places, such as with middle earth, it is possible for people to become confused or at least misled. One such example of this is Donald O'Brien. Please also note discussion at the recent discussion of deleting middle-earth items. I'll quote Korath for you,
 * It's just as easy to paste a "In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, " at the start, though, which is pretty much what the template says to do.
 * So, my question to you is, do you have a problem with the explicit classification as fiction (adding 'the video game')? For further context, you may wish to see my user page where I discuss some of my opinions on the subject. For what it is worth, the page was discovered by a random walk through the wikipedia. I was initially confused, then recognized some of the content, and added the explicit classification that it is fiction. Just because you have all the figurines and have played all the games and watched all the movies doesn't mean everyone else has. For their sake, please indicate when something is fiction. Or, to quote the guidelines,

 * If you add fictional information, clearly distinguish fact and fiction.

 * Avriette 22:03, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Sheesh, don't be so uptight! No, I don't really have a problem with it- I'm not going to revert it or anything; it just seemed a waste of time to me, and I was letting you know so.  And the 'fictional' data that was presented as 'factual' was in fact 'factual'- 'Atris is a X in X' is completely factual.  And really, does anyone think that a person from something called 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2' is going to be anything but fictional? C'mon, have some respect for the reader's intelligence!  But arguing over something like this makes me the pedantic one, so I'm gonna stop now. -- Maru Dubshinki 08:04 PM  Saturday, 02 April 2005

Ship-table images
Hi! If you don't make a picture a thumbnail, you can set it to 300px and fill the box. (Note that the caption then has to be added as well as the picture's alternate text.) With PD images, you can potentially save editors on other wikis a few steps by loading them to the Wikimedia Commons, instead of just to en:wikipedia. —wwoods 21:43, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I have ranted many times that the wikipedia needs to push more towards machine-parsable data. In the case of making a picture a thumbnail, rather than including a new sequence:

image... image description

 * the following is much easier to parse:

 * I use thumbnails judiciously in my contributions to tables. I don't see why it needs to "fill the width of the table", and I don't think it looks any worse for it. As far as wikimedia commons goes, I haven't figured that part out yet, but I am not opposed to doing it. I could write a bot to upload all my images to the wikicommons. Note that on my user page I discuss my desire to have an entirely machine parsable wikipedia. That is until somebody comes up with an API for mining it. Right now it's fine to use, but is near impossible to use for automated requests. Eg., I want to write an app that is able to extract all specifications for any USMC weapon. Right now, that's close to possible because I've been so hard at work standardizing those pages. But the further you stray from that, say WikiProject Ships, or WikiProject Planes, you need a new parser. Standardize data, and it becomes a much more valuable resource. Make it machine parsable, and an API can be written. This is A Good Thing. Avriette 01:21, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I've also been making an effort to standardise things with respect to the WikiProject Ships' data. I've written a template based table that basically covers all or at least all the most important bases when it comes to putting ship data in. The advantage of it is also that being in standard format, data can be parsed from it a good deal easily than with the standard table format that is followed at the moment. At the moment there are sufficient variations to make it almost impossible to write a parser to extract data.

 * This comes into thumbnails vs full-width images as well. I think that full-width images look better when compared to thumbnails. Also, with my template table it does matter. The variable for the image contains the standard information about the image like its filename, location, alt attribute etc. Then there is a separate variable which deals with the caption for the image, thus making it machine-parsable. I hope you will look at what I've done and see what you think. David Newton 14:58, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * That would be fine if people followed the convention. However, there are cases like A-4_Skyhawk where people have NOT followed the convention. If we use thumbnails and standard templates, we can begin to have the workings of machine parsable data. I really think that is a goal we should work towards. I would love to write an API that could pull down information from the wikipedia. Imagine:

#!/usr/bin/perl use Wikipedia::Article; my $wpa = Wikipedia::Article->new('A-4 Skyhawk') my $image_loc = $wpa->imageloc;

 * for Specific kinds of articles, such as ships, planes, missiles, et cetera, it should be equally possible to issue commands like:

my $max_speed = $wp_sidewinder->max_speed;

 * There's no reason *not* to strive for conformability. There are some among us who take a more anarchistic view on things, like the wikipedia is a free-form encyclopedia, and every article should have its own "style" and so on. In fact, look at the history of the CH-21 Shawnee and you tell me which revision (mine or Rlandmann's) was more machine-parsable. It's probably an uphill battle, but I'm willing to fight tooth and nail for it. Many of these things can be bot'ed. The WWW::Wikipedia module on cpan is more or less limited to this:

use WWW::Wikipedia; my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new;

## search for 'perl' my $result = $wiki->search( 'perl' );

## if the entry has some text print it out if ( $result->text ) { print $result->text; }

## list any related items we can look up  print join( "\n", $result->related );

 * This is useless. I can pull down the article (I can also search), but I still have to do my own Screen scraping for the data I want. This means I have to write subclasses and lots and lots of logic that understands each and every variation on the theme. That's ludicrous. Avriette 03:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * (Well, since you're back...) "Machine-parsable" is good, but if we have to choose, "human-parsable" is more important. Scaling an image down from 300 pixels to 270 means giving up 10% of the width, and ~20% of the area; it's a small, but non-trivial, loss. Anyway, I don't see why it's harder for a program to recognize
 * {|..[[Image:..]]..|} than {|..[[Image:..|thumb|..]]..|}.
 * —wwoods 07:44, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Johnny McGovern
Hey there. Thanks for the note. Truth be told, I don't find Johnny McGovern to be very funny. I find him kind of trite and boring, and he's got a horrendous bad singing voice (though I doubt that was the point.) I am unaware of any background he has on Broadway, but I am extremely certain that the majority of his fame steps from his "Gay Pimp" character and his exposure to the gay community due to "Soccer Practice." If you wish to expand the article that's entirely up to you, but I've entered everything I consider to be relevant. Cheers. Pacian 05:51, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hanauma Bay
Hi! The Hanauma Bay article definitely needs expanding, and your effort would be much appreciated. Since you do not mind my "merciless edits" I'll be happy to help you out. As to photos, my philosophy is this (and I provide a lot of photos to Wikipedia): "When a better photo comes along, use it (instead)". By (instead) in parenths I mean: leave the old one in there for awhile, the length of time dependent upon how obviously better the new one(s) is/are. Put your photos up in the article. If they are an improvement, I (or someone else) will quietly remove the less valuable and obviously redundant one(s). The idea is to constantly improve (as well as expand) the Wikipedia, and there is only limited room for photos in most articles. BTB, nice to meet you. How are you getting out here so much? Or was it one time visit? - Marshman 04:00, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, we first came out in November of 2004 for what was supposed to be our wedding and honeymoon (a conflict with my then-employer prevented wedding from happening). We completely fell in love with Oahu, after staying at both Ko'Olina and Waikiki (the Ihilani and the Hyatt, respectively). Then I interviewed for a position on the Subaru telescope for Fujitsu, which was on the big island, Hilo-side. They paid for that trip. After the trip to Hilo, I changed employers and decided I wasn't going to get caught up in the job again and let the wedding wait 6 months or a year. It was time to head back to Oahu, this time to really get married, at the Mililani Hongwanji temple. I start with the new employer on Monday, 4/25. However, we have bought a timeshare between the three trips (three trips to HI in 6 mos!), and will probably wind up going back to TBI to stay on the Kona side, at the Hilton Kohala Resort. I still haven't gotten up to Mauna Loa and I never saw Kilauea, so I'm anxious to go back. However, we do need to get back to the temple in Mililani, so we will most likely be doing a week or two in Kona and a week in Oahu. I would expect that to come in six months or so. We've also discussed a hunting trip to Lanai (although there is ample hunting on TBI, so I dunno whether that will happen).

 * As far as "merciless edits" go, I was initially kind of upset about the Makapuu thing, but when I saw how you had actually done the merge, I was happy with it. My concern was having the List of Hawaii state parks updated and appropriately linked to wikipedia articles. Which, incidentally, I think is kind of a wreck. There are a lot of "parks" on Oahu in specific, many of which are state-maintained, but do not bear names. One such park is the beach at Maili on the leeward coast (appx 30 mins north of Ko'Olina). I've got pictures of it, but I'm not sure what to call it. The locals called it "the park across the street". Additionally, there are some state parks, like Makapuu, which don't really require an entire page for themselves, or for which an entire page would be overkill. I am not sure, however, what to do about it.

 * We seem to have very convergent thoughts on the wikipedia (although mine may be a little more vocal and radical), which is to improve the overall quality of it, a page at a time. So, feel free to continue to edit pages I've created, or ping me if you think something could be changed... I tend to watch most of the pages I create or edit in any extensive way. Avriette 05:17, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Well aloha and e komo mai. On small "unnamed" parks: Hawaii has always been short on signs (and they do get ripped off all the time) so names of parks, etc. probably exist but are not obvious in many cases. Send me the picture, or post it on your user page and I might be able to name the place for you. I'm an environmental consultant and have been all over the place in  my nearly 40 years living/working in Hawaii. The best way (IMHO) to handle the little parks and other interesting places is to tuck them into articles about the area, just as I did for Makapuu.  I recently created Koko Head to cover the many scenic spots between Hawaii Kai, Hawaii and Makapuu. But one such spot within Koko Head Regional Park, called Hanauma Bay, is well-known enough to desrve its own article, so it is split off. - Marshman 17:45, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Edit summaries
You are mistaken concerning my edit summaries. Please see my talk page for details. ➥the Epopt 18:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Category: 1978 births
Your user page is listed in Category:1978 births. I don't think user pages are supposed to go into those categories. --K. Sperling 01:00, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
 * show me where that is indicated, and i'll change the page. Avriette 20:04, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
 * Categorization, also meta:Help:Category --K. Sperling 00:43, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

VfD
Hey. You tried to add a comment or article to VfD not long ago, but it got mixed up and I couldn't figure out where it was meant to go. I've removed it from the page as it ended up as a comment under a VfD which was added after your comment. As you know where/what its meant to be, you should be able to reinstate it. Hedley 01:46, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Blocking
Hi Alex,

Thanks for the message about User:207.239.12.200 yesterday. Unfortunately you caught me after I had finished editing for the day. Even more unfortunately, blocking that IP last night probably wouldn't have helped much. Blocking is a relatively blunt tool - it only lasts 24hrs, so it only works against an active vandal. It is not intended as a punishment, but rather to prevent continued vandalism whilst we patch up any existing damage.

That IP edited the Earth article several days ago and there haven't been any edits since. Assuming it is a shared IP at a school, it is unlikely that anyone would have been there to notice the block on a Sunday.

The best we can do it keep an eye on them and apply a block the next time they are actively vandalising articles. Otherwise it will be a different person who is likely to see the warning messages and the block would probably have little effect.

In the longer term, the most effective weapon against vandals, is to show that their edits won't stick since they are easy for us to revert, they won't wind anyone up too much and their efforts are generally futile. -- Solipsist 21:11, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

War on Terror edits
Which edits in particular do you have a problem with? Sorry about the misleading edit summary, it was a bit more than a cleanup. --Lee Hunter 02:36, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * added the word "supposed" in "Some say the 2003 invasion of Iraq is part of the "war on terror," most notably but not exclusively because of Hussein's supposed WMD activities,". Even the US administration admits there were no WMDs so some kind of qualification seemed necessary.
 * "supposed" casts disbelief on the subject.
 * Good heavens. Surely you're not saying that you still believe in the WMD? Even poor old Colin Powell has given up on that one.
 * updated the civilian casualty figures and removed some garbled text
 * updated by a factor of ten or more, not quoting a source, and using a source which is widely discredited.
 * The source was there before my edit (the WP article which leads to the primary sources) I gave the range of figures which are in the article and are commonly cited. The high end figure of 100,000 has been disputed by some and supported by others but it can't be discredited, simply because nobody has done a better study.
 * added the Amnesty International criticism. Seemed to fit pretty well with the section heading (Criticisms of the War on terror)
 * which is entirely incorrect, has been derided in popular press, and should be considered entirely pov.
 * It's a widely reported criticism of the war on terror by the world's foremost human rights organization (a group often quoted by the Bush administration whenever AI is talking about other countries). It's certainly Amnesty International's POV, but reporting that they hold that POV is entirely appropriate.
 * Updated the US casualty figures which were about a year out of date
 * fine.
 * Tightened up the budget bullet without changing the content.
 * fine.
 * Reworded the "failure to provide WMD evidence" bullet without substantially changing the content.
 * you changed the inflection. that's called POV.
 * Every edit changes the inflection to some degree. If you see a problem with the edit, please fix it.
 * Removed the CIA bullet because it seemed wildly tangential.
 * agree with this.

 * edits by Avriette 19:49, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC) . i still completely disagree with your edits and think they belong on the TALK PAGE and not merged into the article without a consensus.

 * I've added a source for the interrogation edit which bothered you so much. There are plenty of other sources if you need them. Regards --Lee Hunter 02:05, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: User:Jarcanist/Archive1


text:
User talk:Smartgirl3000

RE:False info in Wikipedia

Hi,

I'm sorry if you were misled by any info. presented in the Wikipedia, however, whatever errors can easily be corrected. Please direct me to the entry and explain the problem.

Regards, lots of issues | leave me a message 00:25, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Smartgirl3000


text:
Talk:Ferrous and non-ferrous metals

Dubious
I added this tag because there are alloys that are considered nonferrous that contain iron as an alloying element. So I think it needs to be reworded to reflect this. --Wizard191 (talk) 19:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to re-word it! Regards --Observer29 (talk) 23:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Support merge - There is very little content in this article that could not conveniently be included in ferrous. About all that needs to be done is to add a definition of non-ferrous to that article. Peterkingiron (talk) 20:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ferrous and non-ferrous metals