page_title: Fabian Ware
section_title: Monuments
hierarchical_section_title: Fabian Ware / Post-war / Monuments
caption_attribution_description: English: India Gate in New Delhi, India Русский: Триумфальная арка «Ворота Индии» в Нью-Дели, Индия
context_page_description: Major-General Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware, KCVO, KBE, CB, CMG, was a British educator, journalist, and the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission, now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He also served as Director of Education for the Transvaal Colony and editor of The Morning Post.
  Born in Clifton, Bristol, he graduated from the University of Paris in 1894. After working in various education capacities, he travelled to the Transvaal Colony where, as a member of Milner's Kindergarten, he became Director of Education in 1903. Two years later, Ware became editor of The Morning Post and returned to England. While editor, he expanded the paper and reoriented it to focus on colonial affairs. After several controversies, culminating in a failed effort to purchase an airship for the United Kingdom, Ware was forced to retire in 1911.
  When the First World War started in August 1914, Ware attempted to join the British Army but was rejected because he was too old. With the assistance of Alfred Milner, he obtained an appointment as the commander of a mobile ambulance unit provided by the British Red Cross Society.
context_section_description: Following the end of the war, there was an influx of Commonwealth organisations that wanted to construct memorials in France and Belgium. Private divisional monuments and memorials for individual countries were quickly proposed and the National Battlefield Memorial Committee was set up in 1919 to oversee the construction of monuments for the United Kingdom. Ware and the IWGC had the ability to licence all such memorials and he began working with the various groups. Although Ware felt that the primary focus of the IWGC should be cemeteries, by August 1921 it had gained responsibility for battlefield monuments as the National Battlefield Memorial Committee was dissolved. The Commission planned to build twelve monuments to missing soldiers in France and Belgium, and several others to sailors lost at sea and across Europe.
  Discussions on how to commemorate the Ypres Salient, the first monument that the IWGC worked on, dated back to 1919, when Winston Churchill stated that "I should like us to acquire the whole of the ruins of Ypres as a memorial [...] A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world". The Belgian government agreed to give Britain the ruins of the Menin Gate to build a memorial for Commonwealth soldiers whose graves were unknown. Reginald Blomfield was appointed to design the monument. He proposed a triumphal arch and central hall. The IWGC struggled to navigate various commissions when building monuments in the United Kingdom. During planning for the Mercantile Marine Memorial in London, the Royal Fine Arts Commission (RFAC) rejected Lutyens's initial proposal at Temple Gardens on the bank of the River Thames, suggesting Tower Hill instead. Upset, Lutyens and Ware unsuccessfully urged the RFAC to reconsider. To commemorate sailors lost at sea, the IWGC planned three naval memorials of the same design in Chatham, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. They were designed by Sir Robert Lorimer with Henry Poole as a sculptor. Though Ware worked closely with the Admiralty on the monuments, he disliked it, stating that the idea of their involvement "fills me with dismay".
  When the Menin Gate was completed in 1927, 57,000 names were inscribed on the monument. Ware worked to convince the Dominions to allow their soldiers' names to appear on the Menin Gate, as it was intended to be an imperial monument. They had plans for their own memorials, but eventually all (except New Zealand) allowed some names to be listed. Such vast monuments created some resentment among the French people, whose country could scarcely afford to build large memorials for their soldiers. In 1926, it was concluded that "the French authorities were disquieted by the number and scale of the Memorials which the Commission proposed to erect in France and that some modification of the proposals was necessary". Ware began working to prevent formal opposition to the monuments from manifesting. As a result, the IWGC's proposals were dropped to six monuments – four in France and two in Belgium.
  In July 1926, Ware proposed an Anglo-French cemetery at Thiepval. In an effort to gain further French support for the Thiepval Memorial, he proposed placing the inscription Aux armées Française et Britannique l’Empire Britannique reconnaissant (to the French and British armies, from the grateful British Empire) on the monument. In November, Ware and Lutyens met with the French architect Emmanuel Pontremoli and the French general Noël Édouard to discuss Thiepval. After two years of further discussions, approval for the project was granted by the Commission des Monuments Historiques on 12 April 1928, and construction soon began.
  Ware attended numerous monument dedications: in 1924 all three naval monuments; in 1927, the Menin Gate, Tyne Cot, and Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial; in 1928 the Mercantile Marine Memorial, Nieuport Memorial, Soissons Memorial, and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre memorial; and in 1930 the Le Touret Memorial. In 1931, he spoke at the unveiling of the All India War Memorial in New Delhi. He was present at the unveiling of Theipval on 1 August 1
caption: The All India War Memorial
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3648", "Image ImageLength": "5472", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2016:05:12 23:59:31", "Image Artist": "A.Savin", "Image Copyright": "A.Savin, http://WikiPhoto.Space", "Image ExifOffset": "356", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[28, 45981/1250, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "E", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[77, 13713/1000, 0]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "399/2", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[12, 43, 18901/1000]", "GPS GPSSatellites": "20", "GPS GPSStatus": "A", "GPS GPSMeasureMode": "3", "GPS GPSDOP": "3/2", "GPS GPSMapDatum": "WGS-84", "GPS GPSDate": "2016:03:20", "Image GPSInfo": "924", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1298", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5639", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/80", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:03:20 18:13:21", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:03:20 18:13:21", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "790241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "331919/62500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "32", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "55", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "55", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4000", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5472000/899", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3648000/599", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "033021000431", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[17, 50, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "17-50mm", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "0000000000"}