Page "Royal Artillery Memorial" Paragraph 18

Other opinions were more positive.

The Manchester Guardian noted that the frankness of the portrayal was a " terrible revelation long overdue ", and hoped that veterans would be able to show the monument to their wives and children as a way of explaining the events of the war.

Ex-servicemen were quoted by the newspaper as reminiscing about the war as they examined the statue, and remarking on how the bronze figures had captured the reality of their time in the artillery.

The Illustrated London News reported how, two days after the official ceremony, a crowd had gathered in the rain just before dawn to conduct a small ceremony at the memorial ; the newspaper felt that this said more about the quality of the memorial than the more negative writings of art critics.

These voices eventually held sway, and the memorial came to be popularly termed " the special Cenotaph of the Gunners ", with Lord Edward Gleichen praising it in 1928 as " a strikingly imaginative and most worthy representation ".

By the 1930s, it was one of the best known monuments in Europe.