Thomas Hardy & the warriors.

The Great War in Europe devastated towns and villages, obliterated irreplaceable architecture, and destroyed an entire generation of young men. The survivors were conscious of living in a shattered civilization, and felt a collective lack of confidence and direction. In "Signs of the Times," written in the late 1920s, D. H. Lawrence described how young men under thirty, sick of war and materialism, have

 
   a certain instinctive contempt 
   for old values and old people: 
   a certain warlessness even moneylessness, 
   a waiting for the proper touch, not for 
   any word or deed. 

The aged Thomas Hardy had "the proper touch." His bleak but unflinchingly ...