World Notes SWITZERLAND

Ceremonial swords at their side, 2,500 men marched into the central square of Appenzell. "You are accountable only to your conscience and to God," said Beat Graf, the administrator of Appenzell Inner-Rhoden, a half-canton in northeastern Switzerland. A forest of arms shot skyward and, by two-thirds, the men summarily rejected a proposal to grant women the right to vote in local elections.

The show of hands marked the third time since 1973 that the conservative Catholic electorate has turned down women's suffrage. "The only result of women's suffrage elsewhere," one member of the assembly told his colleagues, "is that children hang around on street corners or spend their time demonstrating."