coercion has succeeded in our western society. On other
occasions it has failed. But one who remembers the utter defeat of the
Austrian socialists who employed arms against Chancellor Dolfuss in 1934
must admit that violent coercion also has its failures.[52]

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Louis Martin Sears, _Jefferson and the Embargo_ (Durham, N. C.:
Duke University, 1927); Julius W. Pratt, _Expansionists of 1812_ (New
York: Macmillan, 1925).

[52] De Ligt, 131. For other statements concerning the virtual
impossibility of violent revolution today see De Ligt, 81-82, 162-163;
Horace G. Alexander, "Great Possessions" in Gerald Heard, _et. al._,
_The New Pacifism_ (London: Allenson, 1936), 89-91; Huxley, _Ends and
Means_, 178-179; Lewis, _Case Against Pacifism_, 112-113.

V. SATYAGRAHA OR NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION

There is a distinction between those who employ non-violent methods of
opposition on the basis of expediency and those who refuse to use
violence on the basis of principle. In the minds of many pacifists the
movement for Indian independence under the leadership of Mohandas K.
Gandhi stands out as the supreme example of a political revolt which has
insisted on this principle, and hence as a model to be followed in any
pacifist movement of social, economic, or political reform. Gandhi's
Satyagraha, therefore, deserves careful analysis in the light of
pacifist principles.

Western critics of Gandhi's methods are prone to insist that they may be
applicable in the Orient, but that they can never be applied in the same
way within our western culture. We have already seen that there have
been many non-violent movements of reform within our western society,
but those that we have examined have been based on expediency.
Undoubtedly the widespread Hindu acceptance of the principle of
_ahimsa_, or non-killing, even in the case of animals, prepared the way
for Gandhi more completely than would have been the case in western
society.

The Origins of Satyagraha

Shridharani has traced for us the origins of this distinctive Hindu
philosophy of _ahimsa_. It arose from the idea of the sacrifice, which
the Aryans brought to India with them at least 1500 years before Christ.
From a gesture of propitiation of the gods, sacrifice gradually turned
into a magic formula which would work automatically to procure desired
ends and eliminate evil. In time the Hindus came to believe that the
most effective type of sacrifice was sel