Such are the facts. The parties of the coalition have attempted to justify them and to prove that the imperative injunctions addressed by the unions to a government which had to yield almost at every point did not constitute a violation of the constitutional principle of national sovereignty. They pointed out that the first of the “Eight Points” recognizes expressly the rights of national representation; that the decisive influence accorded to the unions in matters of social and economic legislation had to be exercised through the intermediacy of representatives speaking for the unions in the ministries charged with the preparation of law; and that the last word belonged, therefore, always to the popular representation; that, although it is true that the unions protested against the nomination or the retention of Kuno and Schiffer in the ministry, yet in reality the cabinet of Hermann Müller had been constituted according to the customary forms after an accord with the parties of the majority. Other members of the governmental parties, on the contrary, pleaded extenuating circumstances. The Minister of Post and Telegraph, Giesbert, after having participated in the “Bielefeld Agreement,” declared that he did not want to examine whether this accord was contrary to or in conformity with the Constitution; for, “extraordinary epochs and extraordinary circumstances compel extraordinary measures. The conviction of those who participated in the conference (of Bielefeld) is that this agreement was the only possibility of avoiding chaos and devastation in the territory of the Ruhr.”[23] But the opposition parties unanimously insisted that the Government’s attitude was really contrary to the principle of national sovereignty. In a democracy only the parliament elected by the whole people should decide; only it could appoint the Government and it was responsible for its decisions and nominations only to the people of the nation themselves. As for vocational associations, their function is to defend only the corporate interests of their members and they had no right to encroach on the political domain. In the events of March-April, 1920, the unions, leaving their vocational domain, revealed themselves the real masters of Parliament and of the Cabinet, which had to submit to their injunctions. The Independents congratulated themselves and proclaimed that thereafter the Government was placed under a certain surveillance of the organized proletariat. The parties of the Right indignantly refused to acknowledge a “side government” (Nebenregierung) over the regular government. “Henceforth,” said one of the opposition journals, “workingmen’s organizations can say that their orders are always carried out. It is true that the Democrats seem troubled by the state of affairs. But what difference does that make? There are only three parties that govern Germany--workingmen, employés, and civil servants.”[24]