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 men in this war. The idea of erecting a memorial hall in Toowoomba was first mooted at a meeting of citizens and returned soldiers held at the Toowoomba Town Hall in 1918. A committee to coordinate fund raising and the construction of the hall was appointed in 1919. The Citizens' Memorial Hall Committee purchased land for the hall in 1919 in Ruthven Street for ₤500, on the understanding that the Town Council acquired adjoining land at the corner of Herries Street. It was anticipated that the committee would facilitate construction and furnishing of the hall, which would then be handed