IN response to the comments of A Goodfellow from Paget in last week's , who in a Letter to the Editor challenged my opinions of concerning the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War and the non-white participation in those conflicts, let me state this: I will never write about world history without including the perspectives of non-white peoples in that history.

To do otherwise would not only be an injustice to all of those peoples but an insult to my own ancestors and the realities they faced in living through those times.

If the whole world was shocked at the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, I submit that the atrocities and brutalities committed by the Germans on the conquered European peoples were on the same level (if not less extreme) than what these same peoples had inflicted on non-white for hundreds of years during the colonial epoch.

Some years ago when I visited Washington, DC I went to one of the many museums in that capital city, this one chronicling the history of the Native American peoples who lived in what would become the United States and Canada. Algonquin; Mohawk; Pequot; Iroqois; Huron; Seminole; Micmac ? Native American names are still associated with many localities in North America. But where are the peoples themselves and their descendants? Only a remnant remains.

It is often stated that the World Wars of the 20th century were about ensuring global freedom from totalitarianism, But I have come to view them as the reordering of the geo-politcal realities and relationships between the more powerful nations of the times. Where freedom has involved the whole world ? and not just the American/European world ? then real freedom came with the demise of empires.

World War One saw the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Central and Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the near and Middle East. With respect to the latter, a great betrayal took place.

will know of the story of Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia. He was the British scholar and warrior who fought with the Arab rebels against the Ottoman Turks championing the cause of Arab unity and Independence. That was what he promised them if they took up arms on behalf of the British against the Ottoman Turks in World War One.

But, of course, the British had no intention of allowing the Arabs to rule themselves once they threw off the Turkish yoke. London betrayed Lawrence when, in league with Paris, they signed the Sikes-Picot agreement ? a plan to divide the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence once the Turks were defeated.

After World War One the old Ottoman provinces in the Middle East were indeed turned into vassal states with local Arab rulers who were, in effect, French and British puppets.

Lawrence resigned from the military in disgust and lived out the rest of his days in a kind of internal exile from the British ruling classes, emotionally and intellectually shattered by this great betrayal.

It would not be until the end of World War Two that we would see the end of imperialism as the world had known it ? with the exception, of course, of the Soviet Empire which came into being at the close of that war.

Independence movements had sprung up all over the world ? in India and throughout Asia, in the South Seas, in the Caribbean and in Africa. Many of the nations of Europe which had been overrun and conquered by the Germans held these lands and peoples as colonial possessions. But at the end of World War Two they were too weak to hold on to them. Some tried to reimpose their rule.

Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime leader, once famously said he did not become the Prime Minister of Britain to preside over the dissolution of its empire. However, Britain had been bled dry by the war and the empire began to fall apart. India, which had provided Britain with a million men during World War Two, became Independent in 1947, splitting into separate Hindu and Muslim states.

British, recognising the inevitable, did not resist Indian Independence. But there were anti-colonialist wars elsewhere. The Dutch tried to reimpose their rule over East Indian colonies in the country we now know as Indonesia; the French attempted to reassert their authority in Indo-China (Vietnam) and Algeria; the British in Kenya against the Mau Mau nationalists and the Belgians in the Congo ? all the scenes of sharp and bitter liberation wars fought for Independence.

I was too young to be aware of the first wave of African colonies' struggles for Independence in the 1950s but I was well aware of the second round in the 1960s and '70s, particularly those involving attempts to throw off Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. In fact, those struggles led to the liberation of not only Africans but the Portuguese people themselves when their soldiers, tired of the wars in Africa, toppled Fascist rule in their own country.

Then, of course, there was the liberation war fought against Ian Smith's Rhodesia (I consider him a war criminal and murderer of African people: if he had waged such a ruthless war against a European people, he would have been jailed or executed) and, finally, the struggle against apartheid South Africa, a regime that not only held sway over millions of black South Africans but which also ruled South West Africa (now the Independent country of Namibia).

A word about the so-called Cold War ? which was anything but in many areas of the world where the two superpowers fought their proxy wars using other people and other lands ? and how this concerns the final liberation of South Africa and Namibia.

South African President Nelson Mandela will never criticise Fidel Castro's Cuba in public and I will tell you why. In the aftermath of the Portuguese retreat from their African colonies, apartheid South Africa invaded Angola in the hopes of effecting a regime change in Pretoria's favour. Cuba sent troops and with Russian arms beat back that invasion.

As a result the apartheid regime in South Africa came to the understanding that it could not fight all of Africa and its allies. Soon after that Mandela was released from prison and Namibia was freed. But if the West had had its way these events would have never have happened for the industrialised nations quietly stood behind apartheid South Africa.

This is why for much of the world, when they hear certain nations talk about freedom, democracy and the rule of law, it is likened to dust in their mouths such has been their historical experience with the West.

A Goodfellow has failed to discredit my support for Bermudian Independence for I have left him in no doubt where I stand and the historical background which forms those views. He calls Bermuda a buffer created by Britain and the United States I can assure you if the Cold War had turned hot between the two superpowers we as a country and a people would have been gone. Atomised.

Interestingly, I got another reaction from the of November 7 titled "I salute the Black Heroes of war" in the form of a personal letter.

The writer pointed out to me that indeed some black Bermudians had left Bermuda during World War Two to join the Royal Air Force. I will not call the name of the letter writer who gave me this information but I will list the four names he gave me, at least one of whom is, I believe, deceased.

The letter writer stated that the four black Bermudians were members of the Bermuda Militia Artillery and had gone by way of Canada in an effort to join the RAF. If they were successful I for one would love to hear of their wartime experiences. Their names were Philip Lamb; Randall Richardson. George Smith and Reuben Alias.

I do agree that it is the responsibility of black people themselves to write their view of history and not to wait or depend on other people to do it for them.