When a ministerial crisis opens there commences at the same time a period of difficult negotiations. Each political group meets and discusses the position it will take, deciding whether or not it will accept participation in the Cabinet. The answer to this latter question depends most often upon whether certain other groups will participate themselves in power. Then the trusted men or the leaders of the different parties meet together to find a basis for agreement. The President of the Reich naturally keeps in touch with these negotiations; sometimes they are held in his presence. The programme of the future Cabinet is discussed and above all the choice of future Ministers. When an agreement is reached the President of the Reich makes his nominations. There was one occasion, however, when the task of forming the Cabinet was extremely difficult. It was after the elections of June 6, 1920, which gave to the various parties such a distribution of numerical strength that no majority was practically possible no matter what combination was tried. The various groups met and quarrelled but were not able to come to agreement. Then the President charged a member of the Centre, not to make up a Cabinet, but to serve as an intermediary between the various parties and to bring them to an agreement. It is from this preparation that there issued the Ministry of Fehrenbach. _Thus the Cabinet is constituted not by an act, a free decision of the President, but by an agreement reached by the parties._ From this ensue two consequences: First, these crises are very long. The one in which the Fehrenbach Cabinet was formed lasted nineteen days. In a country whose situation is as difficult in every respect as that of Germany, such a lapse of time without a Cabinet, entirely taken up in deliberations and discussions between politicians, is obviously a deplorable state of affairs.