The socialist congress in London was held in July, and the French trade-union congress at Tours was held in September of the same year. The anarchists were out in their full strength, prepared to make reprisals on the socialists. It was after declaring: "The conquest of political power is a chimera,"[4] that Guerard launched forth in his fiery argument for the revolutionary general strike: "The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the employers, protected by the government. The general strike will last a short while, and its repression will be impossible; as to intimidation, it is still less to be feared. The necessity of defending the factories, workshops, manufactories, stores, etc., will scatter and disperse the army.... And then, in the fear that the strikers may damage the railways, the signals, the works of art, the government will be obliged to protect the 39,000 kilometers of railroad lines by drawing up the troops all along them. The 300,000 men of the active army, charged with the surveillance of 39 million meters, will be isolated from one another by 130 meters, and this can be done only on the condition of abandoning the protection of the depots, of the stations, of the factories, etc. ... and of abandoning the employers to themselves, thus leaving the field free in the large cities to the rebellious workingmen. The principal force of the general strike consists in its power of imposing itself. A strike in one branch of industry must involve other branches. The general strike cannot be decreed in advance; it will burst forth suddenly; a strike of the railway men, for instance, if declared, will be the signal for the general strike. It will be the duty of militant workingmen, when this signal is given, to make their comrades in the trade unions leave their work. Those who continue to work on that day will be compelled, or forced, to quit.... The general strike will be the Revolution, peaceful or not."[5]