Object: Destruction

Instead of keeping Algeria French, the Secret Army's terrorists now seemed determined to destroy it. "If we are forced to leave," they threaten, "we will leave the country the way we found it in 1830." Meanwhile, they are desperately trying to provoke a racial war that would goad the Moslems to revolt and wreck the cease-fire agreement. Last week was the bloodiest since the cease-fire began.

Booby-Trapping Cars. On the Algiers waterfront one day last week, the carnage began when a booby-trapped car exploded. killing 62 Moslem dockers gathered for the morning shape-up and wounding another no, including many youngsters brought along on the theory that the S.A.O. would spare Moslems accompanied by children. European dockers had been tipped off beforehand and had kept out of sight. But enraged Moslems scrambling from the scene grabbed the first Frenchman they saw driving by, a hapless Sahara oil worker on leave, and cut his throat.

S.A.O. killers went on to bomb unemployed Moslems queuing for relief at a social-security office and to shell a Moslem cafe with mortar fire. In Oran, where tough General Joseph Katz delayed an all-out offensive against the S.A.O. while awaiting additional French troops, Secret Army snipers fired on Moslems from the rooftops; European householders cheered.

On the city's broad Boulevard Joffre. six Moslems were shot dead as police and soldiers stood aloof. Brazenly, the S.A.O. bombed the heavily guarded 14th-floor office of Oran's new prefect. The day's toll: no dead throughout Algeria (104 of them Moslems), 140 wounded.

Though the S.A.O. had so far failed to provoke Moslems to massive retaliation against the Europeans of Algeria, there were signs that Algerian nationalist discipline was beginning to crack. Near Tlemcen, five French Spahis were killed in their sleep by Moslem soldiers. The five-man Council of Greater Algiers, which controls the city's half-million Moslem population, charged French laxity in suppressing European terrorism. In the Algiers Casbah, where Moslems have instituted their own 24-hour guard, an F.L.N. spokesman wondered how long the Algerian population could be held down: "We have a list of 5.000 known S.A.O. men. We know where they live and what they have done. If the French police and army are incapable, we will be forced to act ourselves."

Murdering Children. De Gaulle's high commissioner in Algeria, Christian Fouchet, still hesitated to use the Moslem "force locale" to patrol European-populated cities (except for one battalion in Oran) for fear of worsening the racial strife. But from his fortified headquarters at Le Rocher Noir, he clamped a tighter curfew on Algiers, promised new tough measures, and hinted that he would ship home all French officials sabotaging the Algerian administration by go-slow tactics.

In a broadcast ultimatum, Fouchet tried to shock Europeans to their senses. "What do you think would happen to you the day the Moslem community is no longer able to control its despair or its anger, the day it sweeps down on the European community? When you look each other in the eye, at home, amongst your families, do you not ask yourself what the world, what France is thinking? I demand that you disavow the murderers of children." The S.A.O. answered by machine-gunning seven more Algiers Moslems, and by sending a booby-trapped gasoline truck hurtling down onto the Casbah. Exploding just short of its mark, the flaming tanker blackened houses for 300 yds., but killed only one Moslem youth.

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