Imagine it’s 1918 and you’re sitting in London having your morning tea. You pick up the newspaper. That Gandhi fellow again, stirring up the natives. He won’t last long, they’ll toss him in jail and that will shut him up. Or something. Something always happens to people like that.

Imagine it’s 1955 in the good old USA. You’re drinking instant coffee. You turn on your TV. The colored people in Montgomery, Alabama are boycotting the city buses. Some preacher named Martin Luther King is stirring them up. You bet the Communists are behind it, but it won’t last. They’ll toss those outside agitators in jail and that will be the end of it.

Do you think you will recognize the next great wave of nonviolent change when it comes?

In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, more than 800 monks, nuns and laymen played a cat-and-mouse game with some 100 soldiers who tried to stop them marching from the Mahamuni Paya Pagoda, which they had tried to enter earlier.

“We are so afraid, the soldiers are ready to fire on civilians at any time,” a man near the pagoda said, asking that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.

If the military responds to new protests with force, it could further isolate Myanmar from the international community. It would almost certainly put pressure on Myanmar’s top economic and diplomatic supporter, China, which is eager to burnish its international image before next year’s Olympics in Beijing.

If monks who are leading the protests are mistreated, that could outrage the predominantly Buddhist country, where clerics are revered. But if the junta backs down, it risks appearing weak and emboldening protesters, which could escalate the tension.

There are about 500,000 monks and novices in Myanmar. When faced with a similar crisis in 1988, the government brutally suppressed a student-led democracy uprising. Soldiers shot into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, killing thousands.

Foreign governments and religious leaders have urged the junta to deal peacefully with the situation. They included the Dalai Lama and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Suu Kyi.

There’s an old movement saying — ‘The whole world is watching.’ Keep your eyes on this one.