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Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, like most offensives aimed at Moscow, peaceful or otherwise, got off to a flying start but is now inevitably bogged down to the axles in the limitless muddy tundra of terminology.

The big freeze is nothing to the difficulties created when the thaw sets in, as every German general knows.

West German spearheads in the shape of Herr Willy Brandt in person reached Moscow last August when the famous pact renounc- ing force was signed, an academic exercise at least on Bonn's part bearing in mind the relative capacity for using force of the two High Contracting Parties.

After the chinking of the champagne glasses the autumn campaign bubbled along merrily. The big propaganda guns on both sides fell silent. The Germans established a firm supporting base in Warsaw, a costly operation involving the sacrifice of 40,000 square miles of former German territory but a necessary one to obtain freedom of man- oeuvre.

The High Command communiques during this period were optimistic. It would all be over by Christmas. Good use was made of the hard winter months with both sides con- solidating their positions. Meanwhile promis- ing parleys were going on between Daimler- Benz and Soviet emissaries with a view to the Germans constructing—and financing—a mammoth factory on the Kama river in the Urals to manufacture twenty-ton lorries for the Russians, thus freeing them to concen- trate on building similar but more costly vehicles to put on the moon, a project not specifically aimed at achieving peace in our time but possibly in somebody else's time.

In (he last week these parleys have been abruptly broken off by the Russians who claim that Daimler-Benz are demanding too high a price.

The second prong of the big peace offen- sive also suffered setbacks. Two attempts by Herr Brandt to open a second front in the East German salient were repulsed after brief inconclusive engagements at Erfurt and Kassel. Millions of words were deployed on both sides. In an effort to entice the foe— friend Brandt on both occasions executed a skilful fall-back on the left while holding his right in reserve. But Ulbricht, mindful of the uncertain morale of the masses in his rear, declined to join issue and kept his front intact.

In the course of the manoeuvrings it be- came plain that Ulbricht was not so much under command of the Russians as attached for rations and discipline. What also emerged from Erfurt and Kassel was that the wily tactician was not without support in the Russian High Command. In fact, as has sub- sequently been confirmed by the Soviet am- bassador to Bonn, there is a split in the Kremlin between the hawks and the hawks. A sizeable faction in the Kremlin is as reso- lutely opposed to Brezhnev's Westpolitik as the cou in Bonn is opposed to Brandt's Ost- politik. Notably the Red Army is sceptical of abandoning fixed positions and embark- ing on the hazards of a peace-of-movement whatever paper gains if might achieve at first.

What the old livehards feared was that their East European allies could not control a peace-of-movement once it started.

The bloody disorders that broke out in Poland after the Warsaw Pact was signed, though prompted by the country's dismal economic situation, were at once adduced by the cold-peacers in the Kremlin as a portent of what could happen elsewhere.

Meanwhile in the beleaguered outpost of Berlin, Brandt's three western allies kept up a desultory skirmishing with the Russians more out of loyalty than a sense of convic- tion. But pinned down as they are with extremely attenuated and vulnerable com- munications across hostile territory, which

first had to be secured, they were scarcely in a position to render much aid and in no position at all to make the strategic con- cessions which alone could sway the issue.

Berlin remains the hinge on which the peace offensive pivots. Might Berlin become Brandt's Stalingrad?

The situation here is complicated by the fact that neither Brandt's western allies nor the soviets have the slightest intention of removing their physical presence from that city however loudly the latter may protest that Berlin lies on the sacred sovereign soil of the German Democratic Republic. The four referees are in the middle of the ring and they intend to stay there less to prevent the two Germanies getting into a fight as to prevent them getting into a prolonged clinch.

The West's position boils down, and it can- not be boiled down much further without burning the pot, to a demand for guarantees of presence, access and viability. At present, in the words of the old wartime song, we're here because we're here because we're here. Rights of access and viability mean in effect establishing inviolable open corridors through which the rump city of West Berlin can be kept alive.

Willy Brandt if he is to make the Ostpolitik palatable to thirty-six million voters, must also produce tangible improvements in the living conditions of the Berliners.

His irreducible minimum, though the past teaches that the term is not shrink-proof, is freer travel throughout their native land for the West Berliners at present cooped up between the wall and the wire perimeter, and communist acceptance of the fact that the isolated enclave is administratively, finan- cially and economically linked to West: Germany.

If he can obtain that the Socialist party believes it can confidently look forward to a twenty-year run of power based on the Ostpolitik just as Adenauer had twenty years based on the Westpolitik.

Given the will on the Russian side to come to better terms with their western neigh- bours if only with the ulterior motive of tapping them for financial and technical aid, the Berlin problem is purely a question of terminology.

Nobody is being asked to give up any- thing. Formulas have to be found that will preserve essentially the status quo. And at the same time strengthen the allies' formal rights. And justify Bonn's claim that West Berlin is in their sphere of influence. And that will yet enahle Ulbricht and Moscow to maintain that West Berlin is a separate entity. It should not be difficult. All of these conditions are in practice already met. It shouldn't be difficult given the combined re- sources of the English, French, German and Russian languages. It shouldn't be difficult. But it is.