Mar. 21.
Ir is with reluctance that we refer to-day tu the funeral of Dr, Sun Yat-sen. Whatever may be the decision of history with regard to Dr. Sun, time alone can tell, He is no longer witn us; his work is done when ther for good or evil; his place in the hearts of his countrymen cannot be affected by the fulruinations of his enemies or the puffs of his friends, When Lr. Sun Yat-sen asked to be buried a Christian, he acted more like the Doctor whom we knew in Shanghai for so many years, than the man we read about in the press reports from. Canton and Tientsin. For there was much of the religious in the idealism and zeal of Dr. Sun, much of the Crusader against what he believed to be great wrongs. A simple Chris: tian burial, to the hymns "Abide with Me," "Jesus, Lover of Peace," is in itself hallowing to the memory of a min who was western in training and influence, who found his finest examples for the future of his country in the Anglo-Saxon peoples among whom he spent the years of his greatest and most noteworthy activity. Dr. Sun will be remembered as the leader of the Tungmenhui and the Kuomintang of Revolutionary days rather than the apostle of a perilous experimental doctrine of the last two years of his life. His ideals of democtaey he gained in Hongkong and Hawaii, us he himself said, It was under British and Ameri. can influences that Dr. Sun spent his formative years. It wan in those countries that be finally formulated his doctrines and it was from them that he came lo assume the preside: of his country, One cannot imagine that De. Sun, whose personal life was marked by an_ austere simplicity, would wish to be laid in a alas casket brought from Moscow, that he would seek a State burial for himself, that he would countenance the huge expendi-jure of money on a funeral at a time when his countrymen are starving by the millions, are suffering from the depredations of the militarists, from famine and flood. It is not Dr. Sun's wish, we are certain, that an artificial stimulus should be given to the sentiments of the people at the moment of his death. He himself would have said that his life and his works alone must determine whether he is to be loved by the Chinese people, whether his memory is 1o be revered, whether his nation would mourn his loss. He would have criticized in others and discountenanced for himself all show and ostentation at the moment of death in the efrcumstances of his country. He would have opposed the utilization of a funeral for propaganda purposes.
Dr, Sun may have his country differently from our understanding, but in personal elutions, in the amenities of life, he never could have displayed the bad taste which marked the procession which followed his bier.
The more sober men of the Kuomintang feared that something of the sort would happen and warned Dr. Sun's family against accepting a State furer-al from a government which he did not recognize and whose ideals were so utterly different from his own. The resolution was unanimously passed and the signatures were headed by Afr, 'Tong, Shao-yi, whose friendship for Dr. Sun does not go back to ast year or the year before, but of thirty years' duration. Behind the political suggestions of the resolution was undoubtedly the deeper fear that Dr. Sun's immediate entourage would disgrace his death as they left the last years of his life without grace. Other men have suffer-Jed from misguided ud fulsome followers, from the puppetry and banality of secretaries and assistants. Dr. Sun, who ie gone gnd cannot stop them, is suffering from the conduct of Jsuch persons now.
The Kuomintang is a great national party of China; at this moment, the only national party. The young and impetuous Left Wing of the party which seems to be in control of Dr. Sun's affairs, is utilizing his death sucrilegiously to give the impression that the Kuomintang is the agent of the Third International, an organization which has utterly failed in the country' of its origin and which survives! only through. propaganda in other countries. This cannot be the historic rule for the Kuomintang. This cannot be the future of the Kuomintang. /Surely, it will work constructively for China and not as the mere Puppet of a foreign propaganda' bureau engaged in advocating social und economic fallacies: which can have no place in such country as China. The Kuomintang as political party should assert itself before its reputation and future are wreck: ed by these reckless politicians who know not what they do nor whither they go.
Let Dr. Sun's soul rest pence after the storm of his life. May controversy and stupidity cease about his bier. May his memory be hallowed by the good he had done and may his errors end faults be interred with his ashes.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.