ABSTRACT
There is another side to the fiction of the War generation that is concerned with war only by reference or by indirection. It did not use the materials ofwar, but it carried over into post-War civilian life the tone, the mood, the point of view natural to young men who had gone through the violent reversal from the 'humanitarianism' of the War years to the collapse into disillusion and unrest in the aftermath. It would be diverting to contemplate what our literature would be like now had the poetic impulse released in 1912 been permitted to unfold in an atmosphere of peace. But it was thrown into the hysteria ofhate and its hope was blighted. One priceless if fragile portion of human values embalmed in the words human, love, friendship, mercy, charity, peace, and good willwas crushed and battered from much of our literature by the fury of organized destruction and the callous indifference ofmen in high place as they scrambled for the profits in the boom. The inevitable result was a literature unparalleled in violence. For every noteworthy tendency in the great fiction whose development we have been following was intensified and extended to its ultimate capacity by the talented young men in the twenties.
