ABSTRACT
To be regarded as successful, a revolution must be the achievement of something new. But violence and the effects of violence, counter-violence, suspicion and resentment on the part of the victims and the creation, among the perpetrators, of a tendency to use more violence, are things only too familiar, too hopelessly unrevolutionary. Violence cannot lead to real progress unless, by way of compensation and reparation, it is followed by nonviolence, by acts of justice and good will. To carry through a social reform which, in the given historical circumstances, will create so much opposition as to necessitate the use of violence is criminally rash. Violence can produce only the effects of violence; these effects can be undone only by compensatory non-violence after the event; where violence has been used for a long period, a habit of violence is formed and it becomes exceedingly difficult for the perpetrators of violence to reverse their policy.
