Menin Gate offered to the citizens of Ypres for the ornament of their city and in commemoration of the days where the British Army defended it against the invader." Reaction to the Menin Gate, the first of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission's Memorials to the Missing, ranged from its condemnation by the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, to praise by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Sassoon described the Menin Gate in his poem 'On Passing the New Menin Gate', saying that the dead of the Ypres Salient would "deride this sepulchre of crime". Zweig, in contrast, praised the simplicity of the
Soldiers Memorial Hall, Toowoomba open, gabled colonnade across the Ruthven Street elevation. A narrow, single-storeyed brick section at the rear appears to have been erected at this time also, (possibly containing additional storerooms and public lavatories); as was a pair of brick pillars, wrought-iron gate and small brick fence along Ruthven Street, between the club building and the adjacent Commonwealth Research Laboratory, also erected in 1923. The top floor of the Soldiers' Memorial Hall, used exclusively by returned soldiers as a club, contained a club room, billiards room, card room and lavatories. The ground floor comprised an entrance vestibule, office, restaurant, kitchen and cloakrooms.