Twenty-Two Policemen

The movement is working. Two years of organized refusal — no British courts, no British cloth, no British schools — and the administration is visibly struggling. People who have never joined anything are joining.

Then, in one small town, a crowd that has been beaten by police turns on them. The police fire, run out of ammunition, and retreat into their station. The crowd sets it on fire and blocks the doors. Twenty-two policemen burn to death inside.

They are not soldiers of an empire. They are local men on local wages.

He can call off the entire national movement — every campaign, everywhere, at its strongest moment — and tell millions of people who have gone to prison for this that it stops now, because of one town. His own leadership is in jail and will hear about it there.

Or he can condemn the killings, discipline that district, and keep going, because the thing being fought for is worth more than one town's failure.