But my impression of the 'Golden Age' is that quote: People thought they were ushering in a golden era, only to turn around and fall into a cesspool; the Belle Époque of early 20th-century Europe, where technology was soaring and art was brilliant, with nations from all over gathering at the Paris Exposition, no one believed civilization would collapse, yet two years later, the trenches along the Marne River were filled with the flesh and blood of an entire generation of young people.