In Calcutta last Thursday, a British-trained Indian general gave a terse description of the enemy rout in East Pakistan: “When you get outmaneuvered and feel you are going to get beaten badly, a chap says, ‘Let me get the hell out of here and see if I can fight in another place.’”

In East Pakistan, the general's report took on epic—and tragic—human scale. Outnumbered on the ground and under strafing from the sky, Punjabi soldiers from West Pakistan 1,000 miles away were falling back toward Dacca and the sea, through a hostile Bengali populace roused to merciless revenge, toward surrender or death. In town and village, the advancing Indian troops were met with jubilation and cries of “Joi Bangla!”—“Victory for Bengali”

Before a cheering Parliament in New Delhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced formal recognition of the government‐in‐exile of Bangla Desh, or Bengal Nation, the new state that was soon to be set up in the east, leaving the hated enemy, Pakistan, with only its western wing.

In the west, the Indian strategy of standoff pending victory in the east was working too. Pakistan was thrusting into southern Kashmir, trying to isolate Indian forces farther to the north, but the attack seemed stalled while planes of both sides swapped strikes across the 1,400‐mile‐long border. The bulk of West Pakistan's 11 infantry and two armored divisions has not attacked the main Indian positions, tending to confirm that Rawalpindi's hope had been not for military victory but for international intervention that would freeze its increasingly untenable position in the rebellious East.

If so, Rawalpindi had missed, its bet. Faced with disaster, President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan gave his military regime a civilian face‐lift and sent a new Deputy Prime Minister, the veteran political figure Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to the United Nations to plead his government's case. But there seemed little Mr. Bhutto could do about India's rejection of a General Assembly resolution last Tuesday calling for a truce and a pullback of troops. “We are not foolish,” an Indian delegate said.

In Dacca, where foreigners herded into the Intercontinental Hotel had a rooftop view of Indian MIG's bombing the airfield, several bombs were reported to have hit a nearby orphanage. City officials said as many as 300 children had been killed. In Alamgir, a dusty Indian village in the west, New York Times correspondent Fox Butterfield saw the other side of the coin. Fifteen villagers were killed in a night attack by two Pakistani planes. The next morning the villagers found bomb fragments with United States markings. “It is President Nixon and his policy of aid to Pakistan that is responsible!” shouted a man whose sister was among the dead.

With all its cruelties, deliberate or unintended, the two‐front war that broke out last weekend was adhering thus far to the Indian plan. From New Delhi, New York Times correspondent Charles Mohr reported on the outlook now:

“India is within reach of her goal in the east. The significance of this is hard to exaggerate. With her eastern half lopped off, Pakistan will be a nation of 55 million, outnumbered by India 10 to one. The Pakistani threat to India will be eliminated.

“That outside intervention can save the Pakistanis in the east seems highly unlikely. China has supported Pakistan with diplomacy and supplies, but her army in Tibet, on India's northern border, has not moved. The Chinese could deal a sharp blow to Indian forces on the border but they could hardly move an army through the mountains of northwest India into the plains below. Besides, there is no telling what Moscow—India's ally—would do if the Chinese intervened on behalf of Pakistan.

“After winning in the east, India can move reinforcements to the western front, where the war will eventually have to be brought, to a close. There are elements in the Indian Army that would like to deal the Pakistani Army a crippling blow in the west to reduce its remaining military potential. There are also Hindu political extremists who would like to see the total conquest of West Pakistan. But they have little strength. The Government of Mrs. Gandhi is likely to resist both courses.

“The strategic debate in New Delhi may now revolve around the disputed territory of Kashmir. For emotional reasons, the. Indians may try to occupy and retain the Pakistani‐occupied sector. But this sector of Kashmir is of such little value that at least some Indian officials would be reluctant to pay the price.

“In world terms, the political alignment in New Delhi has sharpened in the past week. The prestige of the Soviet Union, which used its veto to block cease‐fire resolutions in the Security Council, is at an all‐time high. The politically conscious part of the Indian population is bursting with indignation toward the United States for laying the blame for the present fighting on India.

“India does not try to conceal that she gave mounting aid to the Bengali insurgents and moved sizable troop units into East Pakistan before Dec. 3 — when Pakistan struck back with air raids on Indian air fields in the west tut the Indians argue that the root cause of the present war was the ‘genocidal’ repression of the autonomy movement in East Pakistan and the flood of almost 10 million refugees it loosed on an India incapable, economically or politically, of sustaining such a burden. Now, say the Indians, nothing less than a friendly independent Bengali state will do. No new cease‐fire appeals will be heeded until that is achieved.”