Funeral

To the deep roll of muffled drums, the coffin bearing the body of President Friedrich Ebert of Germany (TIME, Mar. 9) was carried down the steps of the Presidential Palace in Wilhelmstrasse, placed in the waiting hearse, covered with the black, red and gold flag of republican Germany.

A great, solemn procession of statesmen, relatives, soldiers marched behind the coffin to Chopin's dread funeral music and between two dense, black, sorrowing files of people who lined the entire route of the cortege.

Down the Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden across the Pariserplatz and through the centre arch of the Brandenburg Gate--through which, during the Imperial regime, only the Kaiser could pass--went the long company of ad mourners. The tense excitement cf the populace was severe and the involuntary surge of the crowd as it tried to prolong its last look at the majesty of the funeral pomp caused women to shriek and faint. (U. S. newspapers attributed this erroneously to "the bursting of emotion pent up beyond endurance." Berlin crowds, as is well known, are not so hysterical.)

Through the Doric columns of the Brandenburg Gate, the prancing horses of the cavalry led the procession to the right along the fringes of the Tiergarten to the Reichstag Building where, before the massive statue of Bismarck, Reichstag President Lobe paid a feeling tribute to the dead first President of Germany.

The cortege then wheeled, pressed along the Friedensallee, packed with people even to the treetops. On the left, the Brandenburg Gate was re- passed as, the next moment, the procession marched solemnly and slowly down the Budapesterstrasse to the Potsdamerplatz where is situate the Potsdamer Railway Station.

In this square, the coffin was placed upon a black-draped platform, great, smoking funeral pyres at its corners. Here the corpse of Ebert remained in tate for several hours while troops marched past to the strains of Chopin's and Beethoven's solemn music an:! while sorrowing Berliners took their last look at the remains of their late chief.

At 6:30 in the evening, the coffin was placed upon the funeral train which steamed out into the black night for the President's natal town.

Next morning, the arrival of the funeral train at Heidelberg was signaled by the tolling of every church bell in the town, the tolling continuing for three hours.

As Heidelberg is occupied by French troops, the funeral procession was deprived of any military pomp. A vast crowd of notables, who had arrived in 43 special trains, formed a long and impressive queue of mourners. Among them were Frau Ebert, two Fraulein Ebert, Ebert's only son, a brother and a sister, Chancellor Luther, Reichstag President Lobe, ex-Chancellor Marx.

At 11:30 A. M., the tolling-bells were drowned in a roar of gunfire--the body of Friedrich Ebert had baen lowered into its last resting place, following a Catholic burial service.* Then, all was quiet except for the shuffling of unwilling and retreating footsteps and the thump of the earth as the diggers began to fill in the grave.

* The late President Ebert was brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, but, arriving at man's estate, he became, to say the least, an indifferent churchgoer.