These teachers coalesced around the syndicalist movement which succeeded in taking control of the Federation of Teachers in 1912. The French government dissolved the federation almost immediately. The true impact of this movement was to be felt only after the First World War.

The First World War came with huge human casualties for France. Around 1.15 million French died on the battlefields of Europe. With the fall of the House of Hohenzollern and the Imperial Habsburgs, the rest of western Europe abandoned the tried and tested monarchical form of government for a democratic one. That aside, the loss of 1.15 million young people dealt a huge blow to the French psyche. The millions permanently handicapped by the war, the news of the gas attacks and other forms of mutual slaughter helped create a sense of disgust for war in the French populace. Some of the French who fell in defence of their fatherland were pacifist schoolteachers who had changed their mind.

The public attitude towards the war, however, became fertile ground for the growth of the previously banned syndicalists, who were all too eager to force pacifism down the throats of young children. French boys and girls were no longer taught to revere and respect the brave men of their armed forces as their heroes. They were taught to see these soldiers as victims and objects of pity. Sacrifices rendered in service of the fatherland was no longer virtuous and respected. Defence of the fatherland was now frowned upon by the average french schoolteacher. The pacifists were no longer a ‘small but vocal minority’. They were the mainstream. The fact that the ‘devotion to the republic’ that the schoolteachers had instilled as well as the fact that the french system of governance which prevented the government from conducting the usual dealmaking which helps avoid extended warfare was forgotten.

As usual, the left used textbooks to shove the message down unwilling or uninformed throats. Here is how Barnett describes it.