Like no other force in history, the First World War permanently altered the political and cultural landscape of Europe, America, and the West. In the judgment of more than one historian, the war became “the axis on which the modern world turned.”10 Literary critic Roger Sale has called the conflict “the single event most responsible for shaping the modern idea that heroism is dead.”11 For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith.
