Nine months ago it was a simple issue. Should a land of seventy-five millions be free to choose its own leader, free from alien military repression? Somewhere, drowned in a clamour of polemic and cannon fire, that simple issue remains. But, as diplomatic strings become cats’ cradles of bitterness, one despairs of finding it again. What does Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, incarcerated incommunicado, think about China’s new denunciation of Russia? Or Russia’s denunciation of China ? Or America’s wrangle with Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Kosygin? He may prove the man who unwittingly destroyed Pakistan and redrew the map of South-east Asia; yet all he did was to win an election and to seek the maximum benefits from victory. We have come a tortuous way from those demands. We must find a path back.

Each of the powers is playing a curious game which grows no more logical the longer it goes. Why should China, arch proponent of guerrilla struggles, increasingly side with Punjabi generals against such guerrillas ? Why should America, arch champion of democracy, carp so sourly about India’ battle with a monumental refugee problem? Why should Russia, arch meddler in vital interests, seek to keep peace pressures off India’ advancing tanks ? There are partial answers to all these questions, but many of them are not particularly convincing; and the mess of motivation makes a genuinely concerted effort to stop the bloodshed now well nigh hopeless.

More dismal still, there seems a diplomatic fatalism about current efforts to intervene - a feeling that when India and Pakistan talk of wars to the death or wars to end wars, they reveal psychological compulsions which no quick formulae can ease. The two countries, in short, were spooling for a final showdown. Let them get on with it for a while; let them get it out of their system. This tactile drafting may appear reasonable enough while the war itself consists of desert tank encounters and random strafings, the sort of action which predominated for many days in 1965. But there are already some indications that both sides are more desperate, and more determined this time. Nobody bombed Karachi six years ago. Nobody claimed naval warfare at the present level. And the tangle of big power affiliations may encourage reckless forays from high commands.

Will China, as this situation worsens, foam idle by again ? Will Russia neglect her new treaty with Mrs. Gandhi? There is an awful logic about military conflict - the logic that turned a Bangladesh guerrilla offensive into full-blown confrontation and soon drag in outside regions. For China especially there will be grave temptations to intervention if Pakistan suffers her expected defeats in the East. And each day of futile United Nations tussling brings those temptations nearer perilous reality. Britain, at this stage, can achieve little. We have argued with the United States about the merits of Mrs. Gandhi’s case, but Mr. Nixon appears impatient with India and more concerned to dole out sterile blame than peace initiatives. We are not likely to get very far immediately with Russia or China. Yet there may well come a point, even within 72 hours or so, when the two armies hesitate; when one ponders a move to all-out offence; when Pakistan, perhaps, begins to feel the strain of battle.

India, in spite of her hawkish pronouncements, is not really intent on driving all Pakistan into extinction. President Yahya does not really intend to hold Bangladesh to the last gasp of the last Punjabi soldier. There will come a moment - a fleeting, fragile moment - for a pact. And the pact will need a midwife. Britain played such a role in the Rann of Kutch. We are well committed to Bengal democracy without being a prime target for Yahya’s spleen. We should at least be ready - sparing no effort to make sure that Washington, Moscow, and Peking are ready, too.