ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M P. 475 



Would you let uie run the pointer along that line, Mr. President? It 

 goes over 20 degrees of latitude, right up to the North Pole. They 

 have got all the islands on the right hand side of that line. If there 

 are islands on the east of that line whatever they are, the United States 

 have got them. Do they contend that the ownership of these seas was 

 bargained for, publicly bought and sold, at auction, put up by Russia 

 and sold to the United States, the highest bidder; and, to use their own 

 expression: — "No objection was ever known to be made to this asser- 

 tion of ownershij) of Behring Sea by Eussia." 



Well, Mr. President, if my friend, Mr. Foster, will permit me to say 

 so, it looks as if he had in his mind that it might be well not to close 

 the door too much against mare claustcm, in the event of it being able 

 to hold water. That is not a very good expression for mare clausum, I 

 suppose. There must be some way out. But still, in the event of the 

 argument being able to be supi^orted, it was rather prudent to allow 

 that assertion of mare clausum to remain on the face of this case. 



When you come to look at it from a common sense point of view, Mr. 

 President, what is it? The islands in the east of the Sea are unknown. 

 Many of them were not named. The number of them was not known. 

 It was desirable that there should be no contention as to which island 

 belonged to Russia and which belonged to the United States; and 

 accordingly they say, all the islands east of that line — when I say east, 

 I mean east in a general way, south and east of that line, on the right 

 hand side of the line looking north — belonged to the United States. 

 All the islands on the west, to the left hand side of that line, looking 

 north, belonged to Eussia. That is the extent. Sir, to which dominion 

 over the seas was asserted. And I say again that it would be a sad 

 thing for diplomacy, and a sad thing in the interest of the peace of this 

 world if nations could create title for themselves by entering a docu- 

 ment of that kind, and then say ''You did not make objection to it", 

 when no reasonable being reading that Treaty, either in the French or 

 in the English, would have drawn any other conclusion from it than 

 that the islands and the territories on the right hand side belonged to 

 one Power, and the islands and territories on the left hand side belonged 

 to another Power. 



Sir, Mr. Senator Morgan made an observation many days ago in this 

 case that really points to the significance of the observations that I am 

 making. He indicated that there had been cases in which, as between 

 themselves, nations had agreed to make certain parts of the ocean ter- 

 ritorial waters, and as between the United States and Eussia, if they 

 had agreed between them that for the purposes of their resi)ective 

 nationals the eastern side should be United States territorial waters, 

 and the western side should be Russian territorial waters, no objection 

 could be made at all so far as their nationals were concerned. That 

 has been done in other parts of the world, as matter of contract. For 

 example, Great Britain has agreed that the fishermen of France should 

 have exclusive rights at certain distances from the French coast, and 

 so France has agreed with regard to English fishermen, and so on, in 

 other jjarts of the world. Therefore, in the point of view of a mere 

 contract, it would have had no effect as regards other nations. But to 

 suggest that a document which upon the face of it was framed in this 

 reasonable and proper manner in order to avoid dispute in regard to 

 territory is to be regarded as an assertion of ownership and a claim by 

 Russia of ownership of Behring Sea, which all the nations of the world 

 interested in the matter are supposed to have conceded, is pressing the 

 matter rather far. 



