(1) The people, for example, want a law which its representatives do not give it. Shall the people be given the right themselves to bring that law into being? The parties of the Right of the Assembly supported the negative to this question with considerable force. They held that to give the people such a right to initiate legislation is to set up a rule of mistrust against the qualified organs of national representation. Once these organs are elected, they bear the responsibility of their decisions in the eyes of the nation, and the latter must give them freedom to act. But to submit representatives to the incessant control on the part of the people is an exaggerated democratization. Further, if the Reichstag does not pass the law demanded by the people, the President, the man in whom trust has been placed by the nation, has only to dissolve the Reichstag. Modern laws, also, are too complicated for the people to be able to give qualified decision on everything they feel like deciding. The supporters of such initiative replied that a control of this kind over Parliament could not be instituted by leaving it all to the President of the Reich alone. Occasions may arise in which both the President and the Reichstag have lost contact with public opinion; in which case it would be necessary for the people to make its voice heard. It is also a truth born of experience that all great political and social thoughts are at first the product of very small groups, and it is only little by little that these become impressed on the masses. The initiative is only a particular form of this evolution, and it presents also this advantage, that it gives the popular movement the chance to concentrate on a particular and important question, instead of, as in ordinary elections, becoming dissipated among a large number of questions of unequal interest. Finally, the example of Switzerland is very encouraging. The proof is found there that the people often see more clearly than their government, and that the initiative is the most solid bulwark against the impositions of extremists. In the last analysis the possibility of a popular initiative makes the political activity of the government more living, and influences public agencies democratically in a very desirable sense.