David, I meant that Hardy recognized WWI was an epoch-making event--the West's assumption that civilization was improving with the passage of time was no longer tenable. Twentieth century history certainly did go on to blow that assumption to bits. The war marked the beginning of "the Modern":
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/30/opinio...rt-modern-wwi/
The author argues that Victorian art was not adequate to express WWI's chaos, so Modernism stepped in.