vandalism being particularly bad in the 1970s. Assessment The Cross of Sacrifice is considered one of the great pieces of war-related art. Its enduring popularity, historian Allen Frantzen says, is because it is both simple and expressive, its abstraction reflecting the modernity people valued after the war. Fabian Ware argued that its greatness was because its symbolism is so purposefully vague: To some, it is a Christian cross; to others, the stone is irrelevant and the sword itself is the cross; and to others, the artwork symbolizes those who sacrificed their lives to the sword. The theme of sacrifice is commonly seen in the piece. Jeroen Geurst points out that Lutyens's War Stone unsettlingly brings to mind images of soldiers sacrificed on the altar of war, while Blomfield's cross speaks about self-sacrifice and the saving grace of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. The sword has drawn praise as well. Frantzen notes that the inverted sword is a common chivalrous emblem which can be seen as both an offensive and a defensive weapon, symbolizing might wielded in defence of the values of the cross; it here embodies "the ideals of simplicity and expressive functionalism". Historian Mark Sheftall agrees that the sword evokes chivalric themes, and argues that by combining the religious and the chivalric with the classical Blomfield created "a single powerful image". But the military element has also been criticized. Geurst argues that one may interpret the sword as implying that the Great War was a religious crusade—which it most certainly was not. The impact of the Cross of Sacrifice on war memorialization is difficult to overestimate. The IWGC considered the artwork a "mark of the symbolism of the present crusade". Cemetery historian Ken Worpole argues that the Cross of Sacrifice "became one of the most resonant and distinctive artefacts in British and Commonwealth war cemeteries, following the end of World War One." First World War historian Bruce Scates observes that its symbolism was effective throughout the Commonwealth, despite widely disparate cultural and religious norms. Historians agree it is the most widely imitated of Commonwealth war memorials, and Sheftall concludes that it has become the archetypal example of Great War commemoration in Britain. Artistically, the Cross of Sacrifice has been called "[t]raditional but austere, even stark". Rudyard Kipling, literary advisor to the IWGC, described it as a "stark sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross". This wording appeared in Kipling's poem