"After the World War, millions wanted anything that would help them forget the filth of human combat and the criminal stupidity of war-makers. Today, nobody needs or wants that variety of oblivion. Still there remains a widespread interest both in oblivion and in war. The causes have changed, and so, too, have the special publics. Take the shift in war interest. Men and women who were involved in the World War still smell its stench, and hate it, gore and glory alike. But we have with us to-day tens of millions of young adults who were babes and juveniles between the years 1914 and 1918. While the fighting was going on, they understood nothing and experienced little, save the flag waving and the silly propaganda of the governments. As the years passed, they listened to the veterans, to the tales of returning tourists, and to the swelling chorus of poets and novelists who cashed in on the bloody episode. They realized that they had missed something big, and they were deceived about its nature, just as we all are deceived by stories of things we have never seen face to face. So, to the rising generation of to-day, the War is a strange alluring welter of romance. It is an escape from office drudgery and school lessons, just as in 1917 the oblivion of wild parties was an escape from the nasty monotony of the trenches."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Walter B. Pitkin and William M. Marston, “The Art of Sound Pictures” D. Appleton and Company, New York London (1930), CHAPTER II WHAT PEOPLE WANT, pp. 18-19
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/World_War_I
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World War I
World War I (WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and tactical stalemate. It was [[w:List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll|one of the deadliest c
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