Duty has come into disfavor

The Western honor code came under stress in the 20th century because the first half of that century was so full of what seemed like senseless war. 

It felt like the leadership of the Western nations had thrown the world into war merely to exercise the prerogatives of honor, not unlike the Middle East foolishness we are seeing today in the 21st century where national honor groups have become death cults. 

Honor codes are moving down from disrepute to dysfunction. The left, which in the 20th century was the leading ideology to discredit the Victorian and Edwardian honor codes of Europe, is today embracing the death cultist honor codes of the Middle East. 

A profound desacralization is going on on the left and much of the world is revolted by the spiritual disease one feels about them. Duty has come into disfavor. 

The modern era (ever since the American Civil War) has been marked by a fecklessness on the part of responsible leadership willing to engage in war for what even at the time comes across as frivolous reasons. An overweaning attachment to honor codes seems to have corrupted the judgment of the military's officer corp in the 20th century, especially, for example, among the French at the dawn of WWII. The technology of contemporary warfare had undermined the role of honor codes in the prosecution of modern warfare but the military elites had lost sight of that. 

Just as a foolish military leadership always fights the last war strategically and technologically, so, a fortiori, does it fight the last war and even the last century's war culturally.