APPENDIX 437 



sumed) within three miles of a line drawn from headland 

 to headland." (American Case Appendix, page 629). 



Now, it must be stated in the first place that there does 

 not seem to exist any general rule of international law 

 which may be considered final, even in what refers to the 

 marginal belt of territorial waters. The old rule of the 

 cannon-shot, crystallized into the present three marine 

 miles measured from low water mark, may be modified at 

 a later period inasmuch as certain nations claim a wider 

 jurisdiction and an extension has already been recom- 

 mended by the Institute of International Law. There is 

 an obvious reason for that. The marginal strip of terri- 

 torial waters based originally on the cannon-shot, was 

 founded on the necessity of the riparian State to protect 

 itself from outward attack, by providing something in the 

 nature of an insulating zone, which very reasonably should 

 be extended with the accrued possibility of offense due to 

 the wider range of modern ordnance. In what refers to 

 bays, it has been proposed as a general rule (subject to 

 certain important exceptions) that the marginal belt of 

 territorial waters should follow the sinuosities of the coast 

 more or less in the manner held by the United States in 

 the present contention, so that the marginal belt being of 

 three miles, as in the Treaty under consideration, only 

 such bavs should be held as territorial as have an entrance 



V 



not wider than six miles. (See Sir THOMAS BARCLAY'S 

 Report to Institute of International Law, 1894, page 129, 

 in which he also strongly recommends these limits). This 

 is the doctrine which WESTLAKE, the eminent English 

 writer on International Law, has summed up in very few 

 words: "As to bays,' he says, "if the entrance to one 

 of them is not more than twice the width of the littoral 

 sea enjoyed by the country in question, that is, not more 

 than six sea miles in the ordinary case, eight in that of 

 Norway, and so forth there is no access from the open 



