ABSTRACT
The war on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 was the subject of a wide variety of representations while it was being waged. The Western Front is the site where mass death converted war from a conventional contest to a puzzling, unprecedented catastrophe. The apparent power of verisimilitude lay behind the creation of one of the first film documentaries ever put together. This film and its reception suggested the beginnings of a critical change in the cultural history of the war. The author argues that the long-term effect of the Great War on representations of combat is best conveyed not by pacifism or irony but by ambivalence. Ambivalence is the key to inter-war representations of the terrible carnage of the Great War. The British culture of ambivalence imbedded in representations of war—so crucial a part of appeasement—took many forms. But one of the most salient and enduring is captured in a single term: the "Lost Generation".
