Aha, the absent generation may be better as the lost can always be traced :)
Seanus, its the school teacher coming out in you, absent may turn up tomorrow. lol
On a serious note, I read somewhere the ' lost generation ' was first used to describe a generation of writers leaving the USA.
The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and died, or returned home either physically or mentally wounded (for most, both), and their faith in the moral guideposts that had earlier given them hope, were no longer valid...they were "Lost."