Beaverbrook had been running, from London, the Canadian Government's scheme to commission contemporary art during the First World War and believed Britain would benefit from a similar project.
Beaverbrook wanted the British War Memorials Committee to change the direction of Government-sponsored art away from propaganda of short-term value only during the conflict to a collection with a much longer lasting national value.
[3] Robert Ross suggested that by ensuring the artists worked to a set of standard size canvases they would produce pictures with a unified identity that would be appropriate for a national memorial.
Muirhead Bone described the structure, which was never built, as a "kind of Pavilion", surrounded by a garden, with a main gallery leading to an oratory with a dedication to the "coming Brotherhood of Man for which we all pray.
[3] The BWMC was not without its opponents; many in the Treasury believed that the Government should not be acting as a patron of the arts and the newly formed Imperial War Museum considered much of what the Committee was doing as part of their remitt.
The Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Information, R W Needham, objected that Beaverbrook had no right to generate income for a private charity by exhibiting Government funded artworks and that the artists involved had all worked for reduced fees in the national interest.