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Inter Arma; Being Essays Written in Time of War
Inter Arma Being Essays Written in Time of War Author:Edmund Gosse General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1916 Original Publisher: Scribners Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 War and literature History / Military / General History / Military / World War I History / Military / World War II Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General Notes: This is a blac... more »k and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PREFACE It is probable that when the terrific storm, which is now blowing through almost every country of the world, has subsided, and when we experience the full results of a cataclysm so unparalleled, the movement of the European mind during the war may become a subject of philosophic curiosity. On August i, 1914, we were wakened out of an opiate dream of prosperity and peace, a dream in which the images of life recurred as on a kind of zoetrope, with a lulling uniformity of repetition. So it was, so it had been, so it would ever be, the only possible change being that everybody must grow richer, that life must become more luxurious, and thaf the orb of moral and intellectual experience must wheel ever more and more hugely around a secure and radiant society. And then, with a stage suddenness, Berlin unmasked itself, and the self-sufficiency of Europe was shattered. f Between our old sleepy quietude and the inconceivable X,., and immeasurable novelties which await the world when all this chaos is harmonised again there lies a period of storm, a sort of belt or stratum, dividing the life we knew from the life which we cannot yet so much as conjecture. At first, many of us thought that literature would hold no part in this sphere of tempest, that in company with the arts and sciences it would withdraw from public view, and reappear only on the wings of peace. Bu...« less