The most popular topic in English fiction

To make matters even more ridiculously complicated, Valentine Wannop suspects that her crush, Tietjens, who's been carrying on an affair with her with complicity of his wife, Sylvia (she herself had been involved with another guy with T's tacit complicity, too), has also been having an affair with Mrs. Dumarche (sp?), her neighbor and, subsequently, the mistress and then, after her husband died in prison, the wife of T's best friend, Macmaster. Got all that? Mainly, I feel - these poor, these idiotic people - they seem to have no commitment to or loyalty to anyone. It becomes clear, though, moving on through Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, that wthe war (WWI, setting is mostly 1914) has upended life for everyone - the men such as Tietjens, as he's about the head back to the front, feeling that each day at home might be his last, and therefore taking reckless actions. In this section, we get a lot of back story about Valentine W., particularly about how her family has suffered because of her brother's political views - as a communist, he hates the war effort, despises people like T. who volunteer to serve, even sympathizes with the Germans - he is imprisoned, and the family left at home, widowed mother and daughter V., suffer in poverty - the butcher won't sell her meat, even when she has a ration card. They head off to London, where conditions may be better; not clear to me what Valentine is doing about all this. Oddly, the brother gets out of prison and the mother uses what little influence she has to get him assigned to a minesweeper - a little safer than being in the trenches I guess. Who knows how these things happen in England at that time?, but it's clear that class status played a huge role in the amount of risk any man wanted to face and the degree of glory he wanted to pursue. Tietjens is brave but a puzzle - he does not at all seem like the kind of man who would want to go to the front, especially not twice, as he has no obvious bravery and no political or patriotic fervor that I can detect. He talks about wanting to go into the antique furniture business after the war - he apparently has an eye for that kind of stuff. This novel, or actually quartet of novels, takes a while to get off the ground but as I move forward I'm starting to see its shape and its theme - largely, the way the war affected an entire generation in England. It's a topic that has been written about, acted out, and filmed almost ad nauseum, and it's amazing to American readers and viewers, this one anyway, to see the persistent interest in English literature and the arts in both world wars - we're talking about events a century ago and 70 years ago - but the subject strikes deep for so many English - the strength, fortitude, survival, perseverance, patriotism, nobility - you have to wonder if there is anything fresh to say about this era - but Ford was among the first to articulate these views (and now having a small revival thanks to HBO).