KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct. 20—Camouflaged gun positions, strident newspaper headlines and “Crush India” automobile stickers notwithstanding, Pakistan does not seem like a nation on the brink of war.

Military tension along West Pakistan's and East Pakistan's long borders with India has become a source of alarm to the United States, the Soviet Union, China and many other nations in recent months.

But the classic signs of imminent conflict—rationing, lines of refugees clogging roads away from the frontier, sandbagging of Government buildings, evacuation of foreign diplomats from sensitive areas and so forth—have not appeared.

In fact, there is a feeling here that Pakistan and India are shadow‐boxing, partly to impress each other with their respective fighting spirit, and partly to alarm the outer world into providing more material assistance in heading off war.

Barrages of Warnings

Every few days, increasingly menacing warnings are exchanged between Islamabad and New Delhi involving charges of border artillery barrages, air attacks and infantry infiltration.

Today, the Pakistani radio reported that 12 Indian soldiers and 108 “Indian; agents” were killed by Pakistani troops.

In addition to the border tension, a guerrilla war is being fought in East Pakistan, in which both sides claim a hundred or more enemy casualties nearly every day. Pakistan asserts that the guerrillas in East Pakistan ,are Indian troops or “agents.”

During the last few weeks in particular, both sides have moved fresh divisions up to the border areas of West and East Pakistan, and long lines of army trucks wait for hours or days to use ferries across the great river networks of Pakistan.

From time to time, pairs of American and Russian‐built Pakistani jet fighters screeching over major cities remind residents that Indian bomber bases are nearby—in some cases, less than 50 miles away.

Both Pakistan and India are in serious economic straits, both are heavily dependent on foreign aid, and both claim that without greater economic assistance the chance of war will become acute.

From this side, popular enthusiasm for war with India seems both widespread and genuine.

“War with India is absolutely inevitable and the sooner it comes the sooner we'll smash them,” a Karachi taxi driver said. “I'm ready to go,” a white‐collar worker said. “I got a bayonet wound fighting the Indians in Kashmir in 1965, and my brother was wounded fighting them in East Pakistan a few day ago. But we'll finish them off soon.”

Some political figures here have openly called for a “jihad,” a Moslem holy war, against India and have urged, without effect, that political factions unite in the face of the Indian enemy.

But, in private, few people seem to believe war will actually come, or, if it does, that the great powers will permit it to continue for long.

There were some token blackout drills in major towns last month, but they have not been repeated, and Pakistan's cities look normal in every way.

Foreign and Pakistani military observers seem agreed—at least privately—that India and Pakistan will not stumble into war because of some military accident.

“India and Pakistan have never really been at peace since they both became independent of ?? in 1947,” one said. “Right now shooting goes on all the time across the border in East Pakistan and there's a war going on all right, but not the kind of war the alarmists are thinking of. A few extra shells won't start anything new.

“If war comes; it will be because one side or the other has made a very deliberate decision to start It, and I cannot conceive of that happening.”

Residents of Lahore, a major West Pakistani city only about 20 miles from the Indian border, are somewhat more sensitive to war scares than others. They recall that during the brief but bloody war of 1965 an‐Indian column driving into West Pakistan nearly reached the City.

But even in Lahore, life goes an more ?? less normally and no evacuation seems to have taken place.

“With Russia on the Indian side and with China and the United States on ours, nothing's going to happen,” one Lahore resident said. “The stakes are just too high for everyone.”