The links between Giraudoux and the romantic tradition are well attested. Nonetheless, at the turn of the 1930s, at the same time as he called for a “new romanticism”, he multiplied his attacks against the Romantic generation of 1830. The latter is accused of shamming, of having prevented the birth of a true Romantic movement in France, and especially of having left France to face its problems ill-equipped, by provoking the withdrawal of writers from society. Giraudoux » reflection on French romanticism belongs in effect to a larger context asking what a writer’s political and social mission is and asserting his task to be that of elaborating a language enabling everyone to face their present reality. Thus, Giraudoux berates those whom tradition calls the French Romantics, in the name of a wider conception of romanticism understood as an intimate consciousness of the contemporary crisis.