A new hope emerging

the interwar period

pp. 91-108

in: Heikki Mikkeli, Jo Campling, Europe as an idea and an identity, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

Destroying the dreams of the internationalism of the workers' movement and the imperialism of the European states alike, the First World War was a traumatic experience for the generation born at the turn of the century. Many French writers, such as Paul Valéry and André Malraux, saw European civilization as grappling in the throes of death. Valéry, in particular, crystallized the experiences of war as a spiritual and mental crisis. For as he wrote in 1919, "We civilisations now know that we are mortal." With the death of European culture, a continent once so mighty would in the future be no more than a western promontory of the Asian continent (Cadwallader, 1981).