THE poker-faced Swiss, with their neutrality, cuckoo clocks and tight-lipped banking gnomes, have always had a public relations problem with the world outside the mountainous cantons, suspicions further exacerbated by the recent furore over allegations of profiteering from the country's financial dealings with Nazi Germany. Thank goodness for the Swiss army knife, the nation's good deed to boy scouts everywhere, invaluable for removing stones from horses hooves and a legion of other uses. Mountaineers have even saved their lives by sawing off frost-bitten fingers with the metallic saw attachment.

The knife, 100 years old this week, was patented on June 12th, 1897, by a Swiss hatmaker for an officer class who wanted a smaller, lighter knife than those supplied to the rank-and-file. Once a single blade, today's top of the range model offers 64 parts and 33 functions, said to be the Swiss army's most lethal weapon now that the pigeon-carrier division has been disbanded. There are more than 100 varieties, including a managerial model with a laser pointer. About 34,000 knives are produced every day in Europe biggest knife factory.

While the Swiss blade needs no image consultants, the same cannot be said of the present Swiss administration. This week two US public relations consultants were hired to blunt the cutting edge of the death by a thousand cuts which the national image is suffering in the wake of the Nazi cash scandal. Berne has been accused of acting as willing bankers to Nazi Germany, conspiring in asset theft from concentration camp victims.