Raymond Tong
Necessary Words'This is our country'. At last the words
were uttered: four simple words my ancestors
would have spoken clearly with passion and pride.Hesitating, I had only muttered them,
as though the words themselves were loath to be heard,
were somehow strangely forbidden or else untrue.I had been taught they were dangerous words,
words to be held in check, not to be used
in view of their likely effect on others.And yet they are very necessary words:
as necessary to the English as to the Scots,
the Welsh, the Irish or the Japanese.
I Let It HappenI let it happen
- me and a few million others.
Although I was aware
of the motives involved
and knew what was intended
I did nothing to prevent it.
I uttered not a word of protest,
but turned my back on what I saw
and went off muttering to myself
that one only lives once,
that I had a living to earn,
and besides there was nothing
I could do about it.Nobody was ever consulted.
Nobody asked me or a few million
others if we wanted it to happen.
It was foisted upon us,
gradually, almost imperceptibly,
until the point was reached
when there seemed no going back.
And being the sort of people we are
we pretended not to notice.
If anybody had asked us
we would probably have said
it was really not so bad,
we were getting used to it.
