The unfolding tragedy of East Pakistan has been unfailingly reported from the beginning by Peter Hazelhurst, our correspondent in the sub-continent. For weeks he has been patrolling the Indo-Pakistan frontier without respite and writing with controlled fury of what he witnessed.

Nevertheless, it comes as no surprise that the world has only now awoken to the fact that one of the largest man-made disasters in recent history threatens millions of innocent and defenceless people. Once again it seems that too little will be done too late.

Over the weekend Mr Gordon-Lennox of the League of Red Cross Societies is reported to have said, "We cannot act on the basis of press reports". He went on to say that official notification of the cholera outbreak arrived only last Friday afternoon.

Earlier there were the usual protests from the Pakistan Government which behaved as if it was the suffering party. Loyal members of the Commonwealth should apparently avert their gaze from the cruel consequences of punitive operations of the army.

In London, immigrants from East Bengal, no friends of the Islamabad government, complained of unbalanced reporting. A reader in Calcutta, anxious because his relatives at home might think he was in danger charged Hazelhurst with sensationalism.

Islamabad, London, and even Calcutta are a world away from frontier crossing points such as Basarat, Krishnagar, and Sabrum. In circumstances such as exist in Bengal invariably courageous journalists are the first to know of what really is happening.

They frequently risk their necks. In the early days Hazelhurst was physically threatened, but apart from the respect of their colleagues opprobrium is their early reward.

It was always so. Russell, The Times correspondent in the Crimea, was treated abominably by the British Army because of his reports on the condition of the wounded. He did not fare much better in the United States when he correctly reported the first battle of Bull Run as a defeat for tire Union forces.

Most foreign correspondents have had similar unhappy experiences. In 1947 I reported the so-called migration of populations to the Punjab—surely one of the blandest euphemisms ever coined by officialdom. Millions of people were driven from their homes by fear and worse. Perhaps one million died.

No one will ever know, but at the time it seemed that authority—British and Indian—did not care. It was too busy denying newspaper reports as sensational when correspondents could not hope to describe the full dimensions of the tragedy.

I have often wondered why authority nearly always reacts in this blind fashion, and not only the government immediately responsible. Its denials of newspaper reports become the reality in most capital cities, until it is too late.

One recent exception was the floods in East Pakistan, but that was a natural calamity. There were no official acts to defend, only, as the insurance companies put it, God's.

I can only conclude when tragedy is man-made that man everywhere is loath to accept responsibility. The bearer of bad news is blamed.

This fortunately does not stop men such as Hazelhurst from doing their job as they see it. Their reports may be incomplete. They may not be objective — although nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me what objectivity is — but they carry on.

Those who are so eager to impugn the integrity of men such as Hazelhurst never seem to realize that they work alone, far from family and head office, often in an alien environment, and not infrequently in considerable danger. Their job is to provide an honest version of what happens, no more and no less, and whatever the deficiencies of their work the world would be a worse place, without it.