On August 4 this year, following the conclusion of the Commonwealth Games the day before, Glasgow War Memorial, in front of the City Chambers, will be the site of a UK and Commonwealth commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the unveiling of the War memorial. It was not until some 10 years after the commencement of the war that the memorial was completed.

But Glasgow was considerably ahead of the national war memorial being constructed in the grounds of Edinburgh Castle and the civic war memorial in Edinburgh which were eventually completed some three years later.

The Glasgow memorial is placed on the site in front of City Chambers where so many signed up for service in the war. The centrepiece of the memorial is a Cenotaph, or raised tomb, similar, but not identical with the one designed by Edwin Lutyens for Whitehall, London, which was inaugurated in 1919 as part of the peace celebrations following the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Glasgow Cenotaph was designed by Sir John Burnett. It has a prominent cross upon it; in London it was decided that because of the great diversity of the dead from around the Empire - Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews - that a cross was inappropriate.

The Church of England was so unhappy with this that it attempted in 1923 to replace the Cenotaph by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey as the centre of national remembrance. Public reaction was such that it had to abandon the plan.

At the foot of the Glasgow Cenotaph there is placed the Stone of Remembrance - again designed by Lutyens. This secular monument, devoid of religious symbolism, has inscribed on it "Their name liveth for evermore" and is to be found along with the large Cross of Sacrifice in all the larger Commonwealth War Graves. The Stone is symbolic of the religious and ethnic diversity of the dead. Two imperial lions guard the memorial.

The monument was unveiled by Earl Haig, the Western Front commander, who was still honoured in his own time. Indeed the then Glasgow Herald stated that the city was honoured that he was to unveil the monument.

"Since his return from France", this newspaper reported, "he has not spared himself on behalf of the men who served in His Majesty's forces."

The Lord Provost of the day estimated that 200,000 Glaswegians had served in the war and that 20,000 of them had perished with many thousands maimed. In his remarks Earl Haig said that the war dead "had died for their faith".

Following the unveiling by the removal of the union flag a great procession of relatives from the crowded George Square slowly moved forward to lay their wreaths - the procession lasted through the night into the following day.

While these events were underway in Glasgow, work was already in hand in Edinburgh to construct the Scottish National War Memorial in the Castle.

It has a very Christian religious ethos and was the subject of considerable controversy. It was eventually opened on 14 July 1927 when it became a shrine for the dead of the war from across the country and further afield to which hundreds of thousands paid their homage.

As Professor Tom Devine observes the numbers who visited it were so great that "the original rough stone of the floor was worn smooth after only a few years".

Civic and working class interests in Edinburgh still felt the need for a civic memorial and eventually on 11 November 1927 the Stone of Remembrance was dedicated in the entrance pillars of City Chambers courtyard where it is the centre of civic and national remembrance each November.

The tension between divisive religious forms of remembrance and unifying secular symbolism that was evident after 1918 remains with us today in the very monuments and ceremonies of remembrance.