Baptism at Evian

Mayor Camille Blanc of Evian-les-Bains, a quiet resort town on the French side of Lake Geneva, set out thousands of tulips in the town square and issued a message of assurance. The peace talks scheduled to begin there this week between France and the Algerian rebels would not turn the place into a madhouse, he said. "Don't worry, it will be a season just like any other year." A Resistance hero, the burly mayor owned the tidy Beau-Rivage Hotel and was the most popular man in town. He did not mention the threatening letters he had received from French ultras, accusing him of trying to make a profit out of France's misfortunes and warning: "We'll have your hide."

Before dawn one morning last week, a plastic-bomb* explosion wrecked Mayor Blanc's ancient Citroen, parked in front of the Beau-Rivage. Blanc leaped out of bed and ran for a phone in a ground floor office--just as the bombers had expected. Fifteen seconds after the first bomb, a second and larger one exploded on the window sill of the office, blowing off Blanc's shoulder and part of his face. "They got me," he gasped and 15 minutes later he died. Who were "they"? Presumably right-wingers who want no parleying with the F.L.N.

The violence was not all on one side. Moslem terrorists in Oran raped a French girl and cut her escort's throat. They killed a French prison guard, a Jewish taxi driver, a Moslem with pro-French sympathies, and tossed a grenade in a Constantine bar, wounding 16. F.L.N. men raided a factory and killed four Europeans, broke in on a wedding and mowed down four guests.

The Evian talks still had barriers of mistrust to cross. The F.L.N. position is that France may "consult" with all Algerian factions but must negotiate only with the F.L.N. Last week F.L.N. tempers flared when Louis Joxe, De Gaulle's Minister for Algeria, said that he would meet with a small Moslem group, the Mouvement National Algerien (M.N.A.), "as I will meet with the F.L.N."

The M.N.A is headed by bearded Messali Hadj, 63, who was 'once as fanatic as the F.L.N. zealots. But after years of house arrest in France, he now espouses "association" with the French, has lost nearly all influence in Algeria itself; now his support comes chiefly from Algerian workers in France. Angrily, the F.L.N. dismissed the M.N.A. as "colonialist lackeys" and declared that the Evian talks were off unless France "makes an official statement clarifying the meaning of M. Joxe's declaration."

* Bombs made of a base of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose can be molded like putty and are the ultras' favorites.

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