Two Gun Cohen at the Peking Funeral Rites for Doctor Sun Yat-sen
Michael Alderton (essarem) notes that: The above image is one of General Cohen, formal representative of the ‘Special Officers for Escorting the Coffin’, clutching the burial documents in his right hand and marching at the head of the all-Chinese funeral procession for Doctor Sun Yat-sen at Beijing. The General, looks, for all intents and purposes, like a traditional English undertaker of the day; dressed in top hat, tails and spats, and with an expanse of white handkerchief cascading freely from his breast pocket as if to symbolize the outpouring of grief and free-flowing tears of a weeping city.
Extracts from the international press selected by Michael Alderton (essarem):
Peking Honors Sun. Impressive scenes. Dense Crowds Follow Body Between Lines of Troops With Fixed Bayonets. Police on Each Housetop. Body Leaves Peking for Journey to Nanking in Special Train. Borne on the shoulders of thirty-two trained men, the body of Dr Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese revolution, was carried today through Peking, where a procession more than a mile long was formed up. Along the streets leading to the railway station, for more than four miles the procession marched through the city. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 people watched the procession. It had been a fourteen hour long journey from Peking’s Azure Cloud Temple to the railway station. The catafalque was dressed in the national colors of blue and white. The only foreigner who accompanied the procession the entire way from the temple to the railway station, and one who occupied the highly honoured place immediately in front of the catafalque, was Morris Cohen, formerly Dr Sun’s special bodyguard at Canton and now serving his son, Dr Sun Fo, Minister of Railways in the Nationalist Government. Without incident, the body started the long train journey to the new capital at Nanking, to be permanently entombed in a $3,000,000 mausoleum on Purple Mountain. The only foreigner to board the train was Morris Cohen. The special train, bearing the body and carrying Mrs Sun Yat-sen, Sun Fo, and other notables, left here at 5 o’clock in the afternoon to a salute of 101 guns and was preceded and followed by heavily armoured trains. Peking’s foreign diplomats will go to Nanking to attend the entombment.
Extracts from Hong Kong press reports:
General Maurice A. Cohen, who is closely connected with the Nationalist Government of China at Nanking, was called north from Canton to Nanking and Peking in connexion with the State burial of the late Dr Sun Yat-sen. It is notable that General Cohen was the only foreigner who travelled from Peking to Nanking on Dr Sun’s funeral train. Lately, General Cohen has become closely connected with the Ministry of Finance of the Nationalist Government.
General Cohen in his own words:
Not long after Dr Sun’s death in March 1925, I’d accompanied Mme Sun and Sun Fo and a few of his intimate friends to choose a site for a proposed mausoleum to house the Doctor’s body. In China the position of a grave is a matter of great importance. The surroundings have got to be just right. For days we had walked all over Nanking’s Purple Mountain, a famous historical burial ground – the great Ming Dynasty buried their Emperors there – till at last a site had been selected. Ever since then the building of the Mausoleum had continued through wars and plagues and flood and famine. Now, in the spring of 1929, it was complete and magnificent – worthy of the Great Doctor himself. Its architecture is symbolic and therefore meaningless unless you happen to understand the symbols, but even a foreigner like myself could appreciate its grandeur. I’d hoped for an invitation to Dr Sun’s funeral, in spite of being tucked away out of sight, so to speak, down in Canton. I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened. I was summoned not to Nanking, but to go first to Peking and accompany Dr Sun’s body all the way from Azure Cloud Temple to the Mausoleum at Nanking. On the special funeral train from Peking to Nanking, I was the only European present. I was used to being that, but there were very few Chinese either, just his immediate relatives and a few of the real old revolutionary warriors who’d served with him when he was a hunted exile and could only set foot on Chinese soil in disguise, and risked his neck every time he did. I realized the extraordinary honour that was done me, but somehow I couldn’t feel pleased as I ought to have done. On that journey to Nanking there was no room in my heart for anything but sadness. (Extract taken from: Drage, Charles, "Two-Gun Cohen", Jonathan Cape, London, March 1954 | Gwulo )