What was going on when I was born?

The International Harvester Company, struggling to stay afloat under the burden of more than $3 billion in highinterest, short-term borrowings, has announced a moratorium on repayments of principal on loans maturing between Feb. 3 and May 15. The company will continue to pay interest on those loans, however. Harvester, which has been plagued by a prolonged slump in the demand for heavy-duty trucks and for farm and construction equipment, made the announcement last night after it completed marathon negotiations with eight of its leading bankers.

How "Fridays" stole "Saturday Night's" thunder C7 Gore Vidal's 17th novel, "Creation," is reviewed C9 "Roads of Exile," film about Rousseau's late years C9 Telly Savalas in "Hellinger's Law," movie on CBS-TV C19 National Ballet of Canada presents "Newcomers" C20 Obituaries Alexander O. Vietor, former cura- tor of maps at Yale B17 Dr. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, former Smith College dean B17 Sports Fisk plans to sign with White Sox B13 Mets' Cashen says club has outside chance to be a contender B13 Yanks beat University of Florida in spring opener B13 Well Decorated captures the Bahamas at Hialeah B13 De Paul gets top ranking in both basketball polls B13 Rebounding is a debit item in Knicks' ledger B14 Dave Anderson on the Davis Cup's comeback B15 Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed Editorials A18 Buying arms instead of strength A threat to public education Philip M. Boffey: hassled Letters A18 Robert J. Solomon: truth in testing A19 John B. Oakes: Westway is the wrong way A19 James P. O'Leary: re-thinking foreign aid A19 James R. Killian Jr.: a science adviser's role A19 ScienceTimes Researchers contend over sperm count and fertility C1 The breeder reactor makes a comeback C1 Education: Historians in the here and now C1 Officials are concerned over one type of meningitis C1 Science Watch C3 About Education C4 Style Notes on Fashion B12 The sweater's baroque phase B12 A trans-Atlantic bridal broker B12 After trying to abolish post, Koch appoints 9 city marshals B3 A winner at blackjack, barred from casino, appeals to court B3 Arizona bar association asks suspension of Kleindienst B11 Arts/Entertainment David Hare's "Knuckle" staged at the Hudson Guild C6 "Marching to Georgia" is staged at the Players Theater C6 "Get-rich" books are enjoying a booming market C7 Metropolitan to do five new operas in 1981-82 season C7 Features/Notes Notes on People B6 Going Out Guide C6 HOUSE AD GOES HERE Index International Soviet dancer who defected says Russians exploited him A2 Pakistani hijackers free a hostage but make a threat A3 Reagan Administration seeks foreign aid "contingency fund" A3 Reagan favors arms aid to Afghan rebels A3 Iraq and Iran report new air attacks A4 Around the World A5 Israeli Cabinet assails U.S. decision to sell F-15 gear to Saudis A6 Polish farmers' congress an exercise in democracy A8 Hebrew University in Jerusalem again calls Mount Scopus home A10 In India census takers scoure back alleyways A11 U.S. advisers in Salvador live cautiously A12 Secretary General Kurt Waldheim urges sea pact approval A12 Government/Politics Audit finds state Energy Office "serves important function" B3 Military chiefs divided over Rapid Deployment Force B8 Local leaders protest proposed budget for mass transit B11 Reagan to retain environmental body, but with size reduced B11 Supreme Court Roundup B18 General Around the Nation A16 TV star and others testify in House on "orphan drugs" A16 Murderer of four is electrocuted in Indiana A16 Hundreds of burros slain at Navy center on Coast A16 Students return to two schools in Queens after boycott B1 Seatrain bankruptcy forces layoffs in Weehawken B2 Workers at dispute center have a dispute of their own B3

tailed deer dashing through the stands of loblolly and shortleaf pine that run down the lush green valley and up nearby Dug-Hood Ridge, whose dark silhouette looms across the river. Soon, however, the deer and the cottontails will probably have to move over and make a little room, because this is the site of the much-debated and much-delayed Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which President Carter tried to kill but only wounded in his fight to halt proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the political upheaval that recently shook the ground 400 miles to the northeast in Washington appears to mean that the breeder - which makes, or ''breeds,'' more plutonium fuel than it consumes while generating electric power - will finally be built. President Reagan, an advocate of expanded nuclear power, has backed the breeder concept. Moreover, the Senate is now led by Howard H. Baker Jr., a Republican from Tennessee, whose aides say he has obtained a firm commitment from the President to push ahead with this home-state project. The President's detailed budget revisions for 1982, due today, are expected to include about $250 million for the breeder. Strong support is also expected in the House,where Marilyn Lloyd Bouquard, the Tennessee Democrat who represents this area, is the new chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy Research and Production.

IN the early 1950's the Pennsylvania legislature prohibited the dumping of industrial waste in rivers and other surface water. Manufacturers responded by digging lagoons on their own properties, so now the state faces underground water pollution. To Joel Tarr, a historian at Carnegie-Mellon University who does research for the Environmental Protection Agency, the situation is no surprise. ''There is evidence as far back as the 1930's that any time you cut down on water pollution through legislation, the pollution turns up somewhere else,'' he declared. Mr. Tarr describes himself as an ''applied historian,'' and he is something of a pioneer in a small but controversial field that has grown up on the dual assertions that the lessons of history are relevant to the making of present-day social policy and that, as a result, historians ought to have a role in shaping such policy.

ASERIOUS and potentially fatal bacterial infection - a prime cause of meningitis - is on the rise this year in the United States. Federal health officials are concerned about the bacterial problem - called meningococcal infections - and they are puzzled why the rise is occurring. The infection is caused by a bacterium called meningococcus. The infection has been reported 781 times in the first eight weeks of this year, compared to 445 for the same period last year.

Spurred by hopes for further declines in interest rates, the stock market staged a brisk rally yesterday in moderately active trading. The Dow Jones industrial average, which posted only modest gains by midsession, spurted ahead in heavy late activity to finish with a rise of 11.80 points at 976.42. It was the biggest gain since Feb. 26, when the blue-chip average rose 12.41 points, to 966.81. In the credit markets, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company announced plans to sell $600 million of 10-year notes, a move indicating there was a strong pent-up supply of corporate debt offerings. (Page D9.)

The United States assured West Germany today that despite the Reagan Administration's stress on the need for bolstering Western defenses, it was ready in principle to open negotiations with the Soviet Union at all levels and on many issues. After meetings with President Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., the West German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, told reporters at the White House that he welcomed ''the fact that the American Government expressed general willingness and readiness to negotiate in all fields and at all levels.'' In turn, Mr. Genscher sought to ease American concerns by asserting that economic problems in West Germany would not keep his Government from meeting its military commitments ''for the common security'' of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. The Talks Go Smoothly In deference to Reagan Administration's views, he said that strengthening Western security was ''the precondition'' for armscontrol talks.

The following article is based on reporting by Blake Fleetwood and Robert D. McFadden and was written by Mr. McFadden. A New York State plan begun in 1968 to help small manufacturers create jobs in impoverished urban areas has evolved into a program awarding a broad range of corporations tens of millions of dollars a year in tax relief. The Job Incentive Program, which forgives up to 98 percent of a company's state corporate taxes for 10 years, now rewards 1,752 companies for having expanded their plants and added employees to their payrolls. In many cases, however, the tax incentives are given to companies that would have carried out expansions anyway, according to some state officials and spokesmen for the companies themselves. ''The way the program is now administered is crazy,'' Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink said in an interview. ''Tax credits are an important tool to be used in cases where you are making an investment and creating jobs. This is not now the case.''

The presence of tens of thousands of infirm elderly people and medicated former mental patients in old, converted boarding homes was sharply criticized today before a Congressional committee investigating safety and multiple-death fires in recent months. ''These boarding homes are federally subsidized infernos for the indigent,'' said Representative Mario Biaggi, the Bronx Democrat, at the outset of a five-hour hearing by the human services subcommittee of the House Select Committee on the Aging. ''The indiscriminate dumping of older Americans from mental institutions and nursing homes into facilities like boarding homes is a deepening national scandal.'' Mr. Biaggi accused the states of discharging the mental patients with ''no planning or compassion'' to eliminate annual institutional mental health costs of $31,000 a person and to force these patients into the ''Federal Supplemental Security Income program for their financial subsistence.'' He called that ''inherently wrong.''

ION By A.O. SULZBERGER Jr. WASHINGTON, March 9 - Zhao Wenjin was hired by the United States Government in 1926 as a messenger and general handyman at the consulate in Xiamen, on China's coast. In 1945, when the consultate was closed, he was ordered by an American vice consul to look after the property. The order was reaffirmed in 1950 by a British diplomat who was visiting on American instructions after Chinese-American relations were broken off in 1949.

USAir, formerly called Allegheny Airlines, yesterday announced a $570 million program of new aircraft acquisition. It includes plans to buy 10 Boeing 737-300's - if the Boeing Company decides to develop and manufacture this fuel-efficient jetliner. The announcement, made from USAir's Washington headquarters, was widely regarded in aviation industry circles as a major push toward production of the 737-300, which is to have a new fuel-saving engine made jointly by the General Electric Company and Snecma, a French company.

In the week or so surrounding the disclosure of President Reagan's economic package, Alan Greenspan, by his own account, made five separate trips to Washington, appeared on seven television news programs and attended countless White House meetings. In at least the Administration's opening weeks, the New York-based economic consultant and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers has emerged as a major outside influence on Mr. Reagan's economic policy. From that perch, he has served as a moderating presence in an Administration laden with unorthodox economic views, particularly those of supply-side economists who are seeking big tax cuts to spur investment. By all accounts, Mr. Greenspan was instrumental in a number of key decisions, such as to publish a somewhat optimistic economic forecast rather than what many considered the wildly optimistic outlook advanced by a number of Administration economists.