government depends upon allowing an adequate period to elapse between the travail and the after-pangs of a general election for Parliament to have time for quiet political work. The four-year legislative period adopted in the constitution of the Reich represents a compromise between the old legislative period of five years and the demands for a two or three years' period. From the point of view of reasonable parliamentary democracy a period of four years does not seem too long, especially as there is the- referendum ; and, moreover, the president of the Reich can, by dissolving the Reichstag, appeal from the elected to the electors. It is true that he can do this only once on account of the same matter (Art. 25). This limitation was introduced in order to prevent any attempt by an autocratic president and a complaisant Government to weary the people by repeated dis- solutions and thus impose their will.
The date of the meeting of the Reichstag is not subject to the pleasure of the Government ; it has the right to convoke itself. The first meeting of a newly elected Reichstag must take place at latest on the thirtieth day after the elections; otherwise it must assemble every year on the first Wednesday of November, unless its president, on the demand of the president of the Reich or of two-thirds of the deputies, convokes it earlier. The Reichstag itself determines the close of its session and the date of its reassembling (Art. 23, 24). In other respects, too, the Reichstag enjoys the fullest rights of parliamentary autonomy, which its president, elected by itself, officially safeguards. Its proceedings are public; it is only on a proposal backed by 50 members and on a resolution supported by a two-thirds majority that the publicity of the proceedings can be suspended (Art. 29). The press cannot be called to account so long as it gives accurate reports of the Reichstag's public proceedings (Art. 30). The parliamentary immunity of the deputies is secured in the most consistent fashion. This does not merely embrace inviolability of privilege for their votes and speeches in the House and their exemption from arrest or legal proceedings without the consent of the House; they have also the right to refuse to give evidence regarding persons or facts with which they become acquainted in their quality of deputies (Art. 36-38). '
j. The Reichstag and t/ie President. According to the old constitution the assent of the Reichstag was, no doubt, required for laws, taxes and the budget; but its influence was decisive only in a negative sense; it could prevent things from being done, but it had no power of creative political action. Upon the composi- tion of the Government and, therefore, upon the general tendency of its policy, the Reichstag had no constitutional influence. The political direction lay quite definitely with the federated govern- ments represented in the Federal Council (Bundesrat), with the Prussian Crown at their head. The new constitution of the German Republic puts the Reichstag at the centre of the life of the State by establishing the parliamentary system of govern- ment on the broadest democratic foundations. This in no way signifies unlimited autocratic sovereignty of Parliament. On the contrary, the principle of the constitutional state, established on the basis of law, requires the co-existence of several supreme organs of the State between which parliamentary government forms the elastic link; and it requires the control of independent courts which can determine the legality of all private and public acts. In a parliamentary monarchy the hereditary crown is coordinate with the Houses of Parliament. In a republic an elected head of the State is substituted. If he is elected by Parliament his position is not coordinate with, but rather sub- ordinate to, Parliament; he has no authority of equal standing with that of Parliament; and he is therefore unable in critical situations to supply any counterpoise to excessive manifestations of the one-sided domination of party. In a democracy the only element of equal standing and equal weight with the Parliament is a head of the State who is likewise elected by the whole people.
Accordingly, in the democratic German Republic the President of the Reich is elected by the whole German people. 1 He is
1 President Ebert was, however, elected by the National Constit- uent Assembly at Weimar. He was really provisional president, a definitive election not being considered expedient until the definitive
elected for seven years. Every German who has completed his thirty-fifth year is eligible. A woman may be elected (Art. 41, 43, 109). The special Electoral Law of May 4 1920 enacts that all electors for the Reichstag have a vote for the president; that the suffrage is direct and secret; and that an absolute majority on the first ballot is decisive. Should there, however, be no absolute majority on the first ballot, then the result is decided in the second ballot by relative majority. The President of the Reich is thus as much a direct representative of the people as is the Reichstag; he is not dependent upon the Reichstag either for his original election or for his reelection. It is true that the constitution gives the resolutions of the Reichstag the greater decisive force; but, in the case of the Reichstag, the representa- tion of the people is distributed among more than 400 deputies, while in the case of the President of the Reich it is concentrated in a single person. The position of this " plebiscitary " president may present many of the features of a tribune of the people, but the danger of degeneration into Caesarism or Bonapartism is meant to be counteracted by the strict practice of the system of parliamentary government, which makes every act of the President absolutely and without exception conditional upon the cooperation and countersignature of the Ministry of the Reich, which, again, is dependent upon the Reichstag.
Unquestionably as a democratic republic was in the circum- stances the only possible form of state for Germany, it might nevertheless have been open to serious doubt whether the parh'amentary system of government was suitable for that country. This system, it is maintained, cannot with any prospect of success be imposed, by rigid legal statutes. It is rather the organic product of a long political development, which can only be created by tradition, political training and by the self-control of political parties, without which parliamentary party govern- ment cannot politically subsist. This kind of tradition and the selection of steady leaders, which depends upon it and is indis- pensable for parliamentary government, are most naturally created where there is a development that has started from aris- tocratic parliamentarism, has progressively widened its bases, and, finally, through the plutocratic parliamentarism of the middle classes, leads to perfect democracy. In Germany historical development did not supply these favourable conditions. The political progress of that country lagged far behind its economic and social evolution. And now, by means of the new constitution, the parliamentary system and the most complete democratiza- tion, which had become inevitable, were simultaneously intro- duced, and that at a time when there was an entire lack of any leadership traditional and acknowledged by the free play of custom; at a moment, too, when the external situation was the most unfortunate conceivable; and when a very powerful social movement was asserting itself in the country. This is so; and yet what was necessary had also to be rendered possible in the midst of this decisive crisis of the destinies of the German people. For a people of 60 millions the organization of a pure, direct dcmotracy could not be entertained. Suggestions were made from many quarters that, on the model of the American constitu- tion, the executive power should be wholly entrusted to the president elected by the people, with a ministry dependent solely upon him and not upon Parliament. But this dualistic system, which lays excessive stress upon the separation of powers, has exhibited great imperfections when confronted with the demands of modern political life. The absence of a system of parliamentary government is, perhaps, the most serious defect in the otherwise admirable edifice of the American constitution. And Germany's own experiences of the unbridged dualism of Government and Parliament under the old regime offered no inducement to reestablish it in a republican form. In spite of all the objections which have been mentioned, the new constitution had therefore to decide in favour of the parliamentary system in the confident hope that the practice of this system would itself gradually produce the political conditions requisite for its
extent of the German Reich had been decided, e.g. by the destiny of Upper Silesia.
