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 Library and other local residents, with the stipulation that it be in memory of the town's war participants. It is not known why or how Robert Wambolt was chosen as the principal architect; this library is his only known work in Maine. Soldiers Memorial Library The Soldiers Memorial Library is the public library of Hiram, Maine. It is located at 85 Main Street in the center of the small town, in a small concrete-block building erected in 1915–16. It is architecturally significant as one only two library buildings in the state built using ornamental concrete blocks, and was for this reason