September Song

In France and Algeria Sept. 17 was circled on the calendar and engraved on many a mind. That is the day when the U.N. General Assembly gathers again in Manhattan, and last week both sides in the Algerian dispute were busily preparing their cases.

In Paris the French government issued a report telling all it had done for the Algerians: despite the terror. French administrators had built 1,000 miles of roads, 3,500 watering places, 18,000 new hospital beds since World War II. In Algiers French Mayor Jacques Chevallier called a press conference to report on the 5,562 houses built in the city in the past three years. In the next few weeks nearly every U.N. country this side of the Iron Curtain will be visited by a prominent Frenchman, explaining France's position in Algeria. Emile Roche, president of the Economic Council, is already in Buenos Aires. Christian Pineau will go to Brazil, Senate President Gaston Monnerville (a Negro) to Peru, and Foreign Office Under Secretary Maurice Faure to Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

The French were not the only salesmen on the road. Two Algerian rebel leaders showed up in neutral Stockholm. Rebel Leader Ferhat Abbas, in Montevideo, announced: "We have decided to knock at all Western doors, even of the United States. But if our appeals are not crowned with success, we will go to Moscow to embrace the serpent itself, ready for anything that will obtain liberty, just like Morocco and Tunisia."

Usually the tempo of violence increases just before a U.N. session, as the Algeri ans try to show how powerful they still are and the French try to show how effectively they are ''pacifying" the rebels. In the Massif of Bou Zegza, 40 miles southeast of Algiers, last week French troops saw a body of men in French uniforms and steel helmets approaching. As they drew near, the rebels in French clothing opened up with machine guns and grenades, killing 21 French, wounding 20 others. Angrily the French trotted up artillery, aircraft and no less than five generals in a three-day counteroffensive.

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