THE WOMEN WRITERS 345

Prussian hero. He is, in the novel's showing, more than Prussian:
the great collective ideal for the future is the fusing, say by a kind
of State chemistry, of German provincial characteristics into a per-
fect character who will stand for ideal and supreme Germany; and
thus in this boy the artistic qualities of the Rhineland are blended
with the hard metal of military Prussia. Perhaps a more insistent
burden of the tale is the absolute and the statesmanlike necessity
of the Prussian military machine, and its essential humanity - in
the sense that the man is served by the machine, which must no
more be questioned than the machines in a factory. This doctrine
of the categorical imperative is developed at immense length and
with insinuating simplicity. Der Weg ohne Wahl (1933) is a Kunstler-
roman which develops the theme that the conquest of fate can only
come by wishing one's fate. I^ennacker (1938) is a Heimkehrerroman:
an officer welded to the ways of the War has to adapt himself to
the life of peace. But the chief problem is that of the mental peace
of parsons.