hand. As a result, according to historians like Darlington or van der Linden and Thorpe, the CGT was no longer a revolutionary syndicalist organization after the start of World War I. It followed the French president's call for national unity by agreeing to a no-strike pledge and to resolve labor disputes through arbitration and by actively participating in the French war effort. Most of its members of military age were conscripted without resistance and its ranks shrank from 350,000 in 1913 to 49,000 dues-paying members in 1915. CGT leaders defended this course by arguing that France's war against Germany was a war between democracy and republicanism on the one side and barbaric militarism on the other. Italy did not initially participate in World War I, which was deeply unpopular in the country, when it broke out. The Socialist Party and the reformist General Confederation of Labor opposed Italian intervention in the Great War. Once Italy became a participant, the socialists refused to support the war effort, but also refrained from working against it. From the start of the war, even before Italy did so, a minority within USI, led by the most famous Italian syndicalist, Alceste De Ambris, called on the Italian state to take the Allies' side. The pro-war syndicalists saw Italian participation in the war as the completion of nationhood. They also felt compelled to oppose the socialists' neutrality and therefore support the war. Finally, they gave similar arguments as the French, warning of the dangers posed by the "suffocating imperialism of Germany", and felt obliged to follow the CGT's lead. USI's pro-war wing had the support of less than a third of the organization's members and it was forced out in September 1914. Its anarchist wing, led by Armando Borghi, was firmly opposed to the war, deeming it incompatible with workers' internationalism and predicting that it would only serve elites and governments. Its opposition was met with government repression and Borghi and others were interned by the end of the war. The anti-war faction in the CGT, on the other hand, was a small minority. It was led by the likes of Pierre Monatte and Alphonse Merrheim. They would link up with anti-war socialists from around Europe at the 1915 Zimmerwald conference. They faced considerable difficulties putting up meaningful resistance against the war. The government called up militants to the Army, including Monatte. He considered refusing the