ABSTRACT
Why, then, did contemporaries feel they were living through an age of crisis? Or, to put it another way round, what did they regard as stability, and why did they see it under threat? Part of the answer can be found in the expectations of the post-1918 world. After the war, there existed a widespread desire to return to what Americans called ‘normalcy’. The world before the conflict, the world of belle époque, seemed rosier than ever now that it was lost. Europeans yearned for the life immortalized in countless Impressionist paintings, of dreamy warm summers, of picnics in the country, of bars and terraces thronged with the prosperous middle classes, and the gaiety of youth. Life was not like that, of course, for most Europeans before 1914, but it was a seductive illusion.
