"Europe is Herself Again"
In a June 1924 New York Times Magazine article, Anne O'Hare McCormick declared that several years after World War I, European politics had returned to normal. A decade and a half later, the continent was engulfed in World War II.
The two most obvious examples of how Europe failed to actually achieve "normalcy" were Germany and Italy... but the signs arguably weren't clear in 1924.
While the New York Times saw fit to mention Adolf Hitler's name as a newsworthy figure for the first time in 1922, a development this website previously covered, he didn't fully achieve power until 1933.
As for Benito Mussolini, while he came to power in 1922, he wouldn't ally with Hitler in the Axis Powers for years to come. McCormick's 1924 article still portrayed him as essentially not that bad:
The triumph of Fascismo is not a triumph for liberalism, but the Italian election marks nonetheless the belated official obsequies of a war combination long since dead. Italy under Mussolini is also herself again, though in that country it is necessary to go further back than the pre-war period to discover the real Italy now so proudly renaissant [sic].
McCormick also cited other European nations like England and France as proof of her thesis:
As far as the people of Europe are concerned, the war is over. The war parties are dead and the war 'blocs' dissolved.
...
For the first time in ten years, the voter began in England last December to vote as he pleased... French, Germans, English, and all the other conscripted nationalists feel safe in being once more conservatives, liberals, radicals, or savages, and in resuming on the home front the old party battles.
...
The return of France in 1924 to a party alignment almost duplicating that shattered by German guns on the Marne in 1914 is the final announcement that the political stampede of an abnormal decade is at an end.
A premature celebration, indeed.
“Europe is Herself Again”
Published: Sunday, June 1, 1924