Without Armor PDF
Preview Without Armor
LoUl^e SV\nocr 1SOH -ftoUoO 5* /j'-y<p TOWER FICTION WITHOUT ARMOR BY JAMES HILTON CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Published by THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 2231 WEST IIOTH STREET CLEVELAND OHIO . • TOWER BOOKS EDITION FIRST PRINTING SEPTEMBER 1942 SECOND PRINTING APRIL 1943 HW COPYRIGHT 1934, 1935 BY WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANY, INC. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — introduction: JAMES HILTON IS AN INTERESTING phenomenon in the world of Youth. It is a banality to say that today Youth is radical. The testimony of the colleges, above all, the role that Youth has played in all the revolutions of the last fifteen years, bear the statement out. Youth, con- fronting contemporary society, rejects it, and being young presses toward a new goal. In all countries today youth leans toward a radical solution of the social problem; inclines to- — — ward greater social therefore state control; is impatient of the past and skeptical of history; is less and less concerned with the adventure of the individual soul and more and more caught up in the corporate adventure. This influences the whole of the new literature. Among the young, today, it is almost a prerequisite of any kind of writing to state, at the outset, one's social standpoint. The "impor- tant" novelist must be, in a measure, a pamphleteer and the literature of the young is the literature of revolt. It is false to believe that no real art can be produced in this atmosphere. The tensions of the present world produce their own themes and their own passions; and passion is one essential element of a work of art. Clifford Octets' "Waiting for Lefty" is not a bad play because it is written by a radical who uses the theater, his natural medium, to express the passion of his be- lief. On the contrary, the vigor and passion which make Mr. Odets a radical also, as it happens, make him a good play- wright. Whether he would be as good a one should the dream become reality is another question. Now, the youthful author of this book stands out amongst his contemporaries by reason of his conservatism. But it is — if this is not a paradox a conservatism with a difference. It is almost completely in the realm of the spirit. James Hilton is acutely conscious of the world about him, delicately sensi- tive to it. He is aware of seismic change and utterly without revolt against it, feeling, as he does, its inevitability. He even, in the flesh, participates in it; he has not buried himself in any external ivory tower. But his passion is elsewhere. Pas- sionately he loves certain qualities of the English mind and soul; and these qualities he believes to be as eternal, or as worth immortalizing, as anything in this revolutionary world. These qualities are disinterestedness, tolerance, fair play, and — forbearance. Mr. Hilton believes in and admires he actu- ally does—gentleness. No more lovely tribute to gentleness has been written in our time than Good-bye, Mr. Chips, with perhaps a touch of allegory in the "Good-bye." Lost Horizon, again, is a fantastic picture of a last refuge in the world where gentle souls may dwell. And Without Armor, his latest novel to be published in America, sounds the same note. — Laid in Russia the Russia of the revolutionary wars, of the battles between Whites and Reds, and ranging throughout the — length and breadth of that titanic country this novel is not a novel about Russia. It is a novel about a gentle Englishman. For a young novelist the theme is big, perhaps too big. The — earthquake and the fire and the still, small voice. Mr. Hil- ton's hero is the still, small voice. It is the novel, of course, of a romantic. Mr. Hilton is at home in this world, because like all romantics he craves ex- perience, accepts everything, even pain, and is able to trans- mute it into something rich and strange. All that he writes has a touch of romantic nostalgia. The best of what he writes — — has a curious I might call it angelic quality. Because cer- — tainly in the batde between angels and earthly creatures Mr. — Hilton believes in this eternal battle he is on the side of the angels. Dorothy Thompson Barnard, Vermont. August ist, 1935*
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