It is observed that the Constitution has attempted a kind of codification of rules for a parliamentary régime, such as its authors have conceived it. It attempts to give thus a guarantee that this régime, new in Germany, will develop along the fixed course it has traced for it. It is interesting to inquire how up to now German statesmen have observed these rules. To this end it seems that the best thing to do is to describe how a Ministry actually is formed, works and is dissolved. * * * * * (1) Normally, and it must be so according to the German Constitution, when it is a matter of forming a new Ministry, the chief of state charges some political leader with the task of constituting a Cabinet and assuming the direction of its affairs. This man chooses collaborators with whom he agrees or can come to an agreement to the effect that they work in common for the realization of a specific programme. The Ministry thus formed is submitted to the Parliament and presents to it its programme. If the Parliament accepts, the Ministry goes to work. Otherwise it is withdrawn. In any event a ministerial crisis resolves itself in a few days. In Germany the formation of a Ministry is always an extremely complicated affair. Instead of only two great parties--which seems the ideal condition or at any rate the traditional situation in the normal functioning of a parliamentary régime--there are in Germany five or six parties, none of which consists of a sufficient number of members to have in itself a majority. In addition the Cabinet’s difficulties are almost inextricable and the party that accepts a part in the ruling power realizes the risk it immediately incurs in exercising it. Likewise the different parties do not always lend themselves with good grace to this risk and often prefer the egoistic attitude and the convenient rôle of an opposition rather than the heavy and perilous task of governing. Whereas any political party worthy of the name should have an excellent programme in which it believes and should want nothing better than to come into power in order to realize such a programme, the political parties in Germany, little sure of their programmes, prefer, before attempting to apply them, to wait until the insufficiency of the programmes of the other parties has been previously demonstrated.