There must be a President. The Independents did not want one. “The President will either take his position strictly within the limits of the functions which are his according to the parliamentary principle,” said their spokesman, Haase, “in which case it will be his ministers who will exercise his powers. He will thus play a purely ornamental rôle, therefore useless and one for which the German Republic cannot afford to pay. Or he will exceed his legal powers, and the Cabinet will be compelled to develop in the direction of a régime of personal autocracy. It is enough, for the purpose of government of the country, that there should operate a Ministry in harmony with the popular representation.”[39] These ideas had no chance to prevail. In committee Preuss fought them energetically. The President, he held, could be replaced in two ways; either by a directorate elected by the people or by one elected by Parliament. The directorate would itself name its ministers. A Cabinet thus composed would be doomed to inertia and incapable of making any decision would “cry for a Bonaparte.” The Ministers who should be responsible to the Parliament would be practically deprived of authority, and the Parliament, with control only over the Ministers, would itself be weakened. The following system could also be considered: Parliament could directly elect a college whose members would themselves administer the various ministerial departments; that is to say, instead of being appointed by the President, Ministers would be elected by Parliament. This is the Swiss system. But such a Cabinet, admissible in a small country, could not exist in Germany, for the distribution of portfolios depends not according to merely logical premises but according to the relative strength among the different parties of the Reichstag. There could be no unity of direction in a Ministry thus composed. Above all what was needed was a personage who should be in the Constitution a firm centre. The more committees there are, and the more elections, the greater also becomes the need of having a fixed point to which may be attached the various strands in the network of the Constitution. There must therefore be a President. This President must be powerful. A powerful chief of state is necessary above all in Germany, where people like to be governed. This is particularly necessary in such a revolutionary period as the Reich is traversing. There must be a President who will be a worthy representative of the nation and who will adequately personify, with all the authority needed, a state as considerable as the Reich. The President must be powerful in order also to act as a balance to the Parliament, which without it might become omnipotent.