And this feeling of pointlessness and cynicism was expressed by the writers of The Lost Generation. It was a war full of loss. Millions of people were lost. Traditional ideas of war's nobility and heroism were lost as well. I mean, what is heroism when you're just sitting in a trench waiting to be blown up? And after World War I, war might be necessary, but it would never again be glorious. We see this shift in the writing and art that emerged from the Great War, as artists transitioned from Romanticism to Modernism.