The modes of applying these high executive powers are extremely variable and, according to circumstances, the measures prescribed constitute a menace more or less grave to the rights of the individual. In serious situations all the authority goes to the Minister of War, who may exercise them himself or transmit them to his subordinates, and who is assisted in civil administration by a Commissioner of the Cabinet. Penalties are enacted; arson, the illegal use of explosives, flooding, damage done to railways, and resistance to legal officers in the course of a riot are punishable by death. Extraordinary court-martials are created and invested with broad authority. The military powers may even institute court-martials appointed by the commanders of the troops charged with suppressing the disorders and presided over by an officer of these troops.[43] In less serious situations the authority in the territory involved is given over to a commissioner of the civil government, nominated by the Minister of the Interior. The liberty of individuals is suspended, but certain guarantees are retained. Prison sentences and fines are instituted. Between these two extreme types of state of siege there is a whole gamut of provisions more or less severe; and almost daily new ordinances appear establishing the state of siege in this region, sharpening it in another, relaxing here and abolishing it there. There are territories declared in a state of siege in which this abnormal situation is not manifested by a single practical restriction; it is there only a measure of precaution on the part of the government. But there are others where repressions of a terribly brutal nature take place. The only limit that the Constitution has provided to this omnipotence of the executive power consists in the obligation it places on the President to acquaint the Reichstag with all the measures he has taken by virtue of Article 48; and in the right that is given by the Constitution to the Reichstag to demand that he withdraw these measures. It is because of such a demand that the Cabinet was compelled on May 28, 1920, to abolish the then state of siege throughout the whole Reich, except in the Ruhr, to permit the elections of June 6 to be held under normal conditions. * * * * *