When the First World War broke out there was general enthusiasm in the participating countries. Numerous artists, both in English and in Hungarian, for example Rupert Brook and John McCrae, Sándor Sajó and István Tömörkény, wrote in a patriotic tone. They were devoted to pro-war sentiments, and applied the rules of the previous ages’ heroic war writing tradition. When the real nature of the war became obvious with the stalemate in the trenches, many artists realized that the previously predominant heroic ideal is anachronistic and unattainable: pro-war sentiments declined. Both English and Hungarian writers, such as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Gyula Vitéz Somogyváry and Jenő Heltai, tried to find adequate artistic responses to the experience of the war, and although England and Hungary fought on opposing sides and they probably did not know the works of the other nation’s artists, there are striking similarities in the tone of their writing and in their representational strategies.