CERTAINLY the distinguished citizens who heard retired US General Colin Powell speak in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel yesterday will have identified with his position that the better-off in society have an obligation to reach down and across to help those who ar enot so well off. In fact, there were undoubtedly members of the audience for whom this is part of their lives. But the message cannot be repeated often enough: we are our brothers' keepers.

General Powell did not make a direct connection but the need he felt to make the point mus thave sprung from the very West Indian values he credits for enabling him to rise to the top of his profession as the head of the most formidable military machine the world has ever known.

And yet General Powell would be sad to know that here in the West Indies that strong sensse of right and wronf has been giving way to the "anything goes" philosophy that comes with the pursuit of materialism - the acquisition of the "good things" in life as an end in itself.

For instance, in place of the extended family-that community so lauded by General Powell-there is the rampant individualism that the late Dr Eric Williams, whose memorial collection he helped open on Sunday, used to rail.

That is having disastrous consequences for the Caribbean, not only at the level of the streets where young men are prepared to kill for gold chains and brand-name footwear but at the level of governments, where grown men see politics as a means of getting their hands on the public till.

Whatever his detractors might have said about Dr Williams and, indeed, whatever his detractors say about General Powell, the undeniable truth is that both men were driven not by hope of eary material gain but by a sense of duty; by the belief that whatever talents they had were to be utilised for the common good; by their determination that they lives would make a difference to the lives of those who did not have the advantage of the resources that these two had.

These resources were partly God-given, partly earned by the hard work and dedication these two men brought to bear on the pressing tasks they faced every passing day.

Events like General Powell's visit and address come and go and it is up to the participants to make what they will of them. The fact that General Powell's Hilton address dovetailed with the opening of Dr Williams's memorial collection, gives the society a chance to look forward even as it looks back.

The question is, of course, whether the participants and those able among the wider public will have the will, in their rush either to keep up or get ahead, to take the time to do the studied reflection that is the first step towards the kind of renewed and responsible individual action so necessary to carry the community forward.