Disenchantment

Written by a British journalist who lied about his age to enlist at forty-seven, this 1922 book gave a name to the mood that followed the First World War. Across a series of sharp, disillusioned chapters, C. E. Montague describes how the idealism of 1914, the sense of honor and clear purpose, was worn away by censorship, blundering leadership, propaganda, and the sheer waste of the trenches. He writes from close experience, having served at the front and later worked in press and intelligence, and his tone mixes bitterness with a fine, controlled prose style. The book became one of the defining statements of postwar disenchantment. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.