The President exercises an extremely powerful control over the legislative work of the Reichstag. When a law has been enacted he may, before promulgating it, submit it to a referendum. He may, when the Reichstag and the Reichsrat have declared urgent a law which they have enacted, promulgate it immediately even if a third of the Reichstag has demanded that its promulgation be deferred (Article 72). The aim of such a demand for postponement is to give the opponents of the law the chance to prepare a referendum and to proceed to it. The fact that the President has the right not to act on such a postponement and to give the law immediate operative power by promulgating it, offers him the chance to prevent such a referendum. It is also in his right when there is no agreement between the Reichstag and the Reichsrat on the text of a bill, either to decide that the law is not in effect and shall not enter into operation, or to decide for a referendum. He is free, finally, when a law has been passed in the Reichstag by a two-thirds majority against the protest of the Reichsrat, either to promulgate this law, or, if he does not wish to take the responsibility of that, to submit to a referendum the question on which the Reichstag and the Reichsrat disagree. The President commands all the armed forces of the Reich. He is from this point of view the direct successor of the Emperor. He has, therefore, the power called _Reichsexecution_; that is to say, that when a state does not carry out the obligations imposed upon it by the Constitution or by a law of the Reich, he has the right to compel it to do so with the aid of armed force. But, above all, he has the right to _declare a state of siege_.