October 25, 1981

LONDON THREE comments from three European officials, all of them swimmers in the mainstream of politics and public opinion and none of them intemperate or demagogic, suggest the mounting anxiety in many parts of this continent over the prospect of nuclear cataclysm. At the British Labor Party's annual conference a month ago, Alex Kitson, a Scottish trade unionist serving as the conference chairman, roused the crowd with the observation that when the United States and the Soviet Union speak of limited war, ''they mean limited to us'' - in Western Europe. Meeting with American reporters, a Dutch Cabinet member wondered aloud whether citizens of New York would react much differently from those of the Netherlands, if told that nuclear weapons in large numbers were to be based on Long Island. And during a seminar on the Atlantic Alliance, a West German diplomat observed that the United States had placed greater hopes in detente than Western Europe had and was therefore behaving like a spurned suitor, while the Europeans' more modest hopes remained more or less intact.

- Federal housing programs should be revamped to replace current subsidies for construction and rehabilitation of rental housing for low-income families with a system of grants to help needy households pay rent for existing apartments, the President's Commission on Housing has recommended. The interim report, to be presented to President Reagan this week, was adopted by the commission on Oct. 19, the day the Commerce Department announced that housing starts had dropped in September to a 6 1/2-year low. The report advocates ''consumer-oriented housing assistance payments,'' commonly referred to as vouchers. And it proposes to eliminate future production subsidies for low income housing under the Section 8 rental assistance program, the public housing program and the Section 202 loan program for housing for the elderly. The report sounds an alarm about the state of the housing industry. ''Unless decisive action is taken,'' it said, ''the ability of the housing industry, including the financial institutions, to perform efficiently in the future may be severely damaged.''

On the eve of the 12th New York City Marathon, Gary Fanelli donned his all-black Elwood Blues outfit and sunglasses, pulled out his harmonica and sang his rendition of what 16,000 other runners were thinking yesterday. I woke up this morning, What did I see; New York City, Staring at me. I said wait a minute, What am I doing here; Then I remembered, It's that time of year. Today competitors from 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico will be joined by 3,000 entrants from 61 foreign countries in another 26.2-mile journey through the city. Got the marathon blues, Oh yeah! Got the New York City Blues, 26 miles is such a long, long way to go. A computer, programmed with statistical information on personal records, predicted Alberto Salazar's time for today's race at 2 hours 7 minutes 51 seconds, which would be under the current world record of 2:08:34. Just to go Salazar one second better, Greg Fredericks, another world-class 10,000-meter runner, programmed faster times, wound up with a time of 2:07:50 for himself, then seriously said he would settle for simply finishing.

NEW JERSEY residents see a difference between the problems at the national and state levels, and perceive differently the ability of the representatives of the two major political parties to handle those problems, according to a New York Times survey completed last week. The survey, which gathered detailed responses from 1,118 registered voters between Oct. 13 and Oct. 18, found that New Jersey residents had substantially more faith in the Republicans than in the Democrats to deal with the major problems facing the nation. But when asked who could better handle the major problems facing the state, those responding split almost evenly between the Republian candidate for Governor, Thomas H. Kean, and the Democratic candidate, Representative James J. Florio. Overall, The Times survey found that, among all registered voters, Mr. Florio was leading Mr. Kean by 48 percent to 40 percent. This included those who said they were leaning to one candidate or another. However, among the half of the registered voters most likely to vote, Mr. Florio's lead was only 2 percentage points, a difference that was within the poll's margin of error for this core group of voters.

President Reagan said today that the meeting of 22 leaders of industrialized and developing nations had been ''extremely constructive and positive.'' ''The exchange was direct, frank, wide-ranging and free of recrimina- Text of Reagan statement, page 12. tion,'' Mr. Reagan said in a statement after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. ''We dealt with hard issues and yet succeeded in finding many areas of shared priorities and common ground.''