The Great War and disillusionment

From The New Criterion, on World War I: "It is often said that the primary existential or spiritual effect of the war was disillusionment. Barbara Tuchman, for example, notes in one of her classic studies of the Great War that the war had many results but that the dominant one was 'disillusion.' She quotes D. H. Lawrence, who observed that 'All the great words were cancelled out for that generation.' Honor, Nobility, Valor, Patriotism, Sacrifice, Beauty: Who could still take such abstractions seriously after the wholesale slaughter of the war?"