Then came the question to the conquerors, What shall we do with the fruits of our victory? The problem was debated at length and anxiously in Paris and London and Berlin. At first it was proposed to imprison all the socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and dynamiters remaining in the country; but it was speedily found that this was impracticable. To say nothing of the others, the Irish who had taken active part in the revolution or contributed to its support, and who sympathized with the dynamite warfare on civilization, were not less than eight millions. All the jails and prisons in the world would not have confined them. Their organizations were proscribed and their meetings prohibited; but it was clear from a thousand indications that their spirit of hatred and cruelty remained unchanged, and that they waited only the opportunity to renew their crimes. The same was true in even greater degree of the socialists and anarchists. They regarded themselves as the friends and martyrs of liberty. The allies were to them simply minions of tyranny who had combined to crush out human freedom. It was believed that the patriots of the country, loyal to the old republican idea, still outnumbered the anarchists, and would outvote them at the polls. But they were peaceable men, devoted to trade and industry, and had already been proved powerless to enforce with arms the decrees their majorities might render at the ballot-boxes. The summer and autumn passed away, and the problem remained unsolved. It was decided at last to hold another pan-European conference, this time at Washington, in which all the Powers which had taken part in the conference of January at Berlin should meet and reach some definite decision regarding the future. This foreign congress met on the first Monday of December,--the very day on which, in happier times, the Congress of the United States had been accustomed to convene. It met in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, over which the Stars and Stripes floated no longer. The national flag was replaced by the flags of the various Powers represented in the conference, that of each being displayed one day at a time in regular order.