INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
in technology and in the science and art of organization
has made it possible for governments to bring their police
to a pitch of efficiency undreamed of by Napoleon,
Metternich and the other great virtuosi of secret-police
rule in previous ages. Before the Risorgimento the
Austrians governed Italy by means of gendarmes, spies and
agents provocateurs. Garibaldi fought to rid his country
of these disgusting parasites. To-day, Mussolini has a
secret police far superior to anything that the Austrians
could boast of. It is the same in contemporary Russia.
Stalin's police is like the Tsar's—like the Tsar's but,
thanks to telephones, wireless, fast cars and the latest
filing systems, a good deal smarter. The same is true of
every other country. All over the -world the police are
able to act with a rapidity, a precision and a foresight
never matched in the past.1 Moreover, they are equipped
with scientific weapons, such as the ordinary person cannot
procure. Against forces thus armed and organized, violence
and cunning are unavailing. The only methods by which
a people can protect itself against the tyranny of rulers
possessing a modern police force are the non-violent
methods of massive non-co-operation and civil disobedience.
Such methods are the only ones which give the people a
, chance of taking advantage of its numerical superiority to
the ruling caste and to discount its manifest inferiority in
armaments. For this reason it is enormously important
that the principles of non-violence should be propagated
rapidly and over the widest possible area. For it is only
by means of well and widely organized movements of
1 Like all other instruments, the modem police force can be
used either well or ill. Police trained in non-violence could use
modern methods to forestall any outbreak of violence, to prevent
potential hostilities from developing, to foster co-operation. A
non-violent police force could be made a complete substitute for
an army.
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