TRANS-ARCTIC AVIATION—PLISCHKE 293 
discovery does not accord a perfect title to new territory, but merely 
affords an inchoate title which must be substantiated by effective occu- 
pation within a reasonable length of time. 
A recent Soviet school of thought has proposed a new theory to 
govern the acquisition of polar territory in the Arctic. It is known 
as the sector principle, according to which a subjacent polar state 
automatically possesses all territory, discovered and undiscovered, 
lying to the north of its mainland and within the area bounded by 
an extension of its longitudinal extremities to the Pole. Thus, the 
Arctic, like a huge pie, is sliced into a small number of sectors, one 
accruing to each of the following peripheral states: Norway (Spits- 
bergen), Finland, the Soviet Union, the United States (Alaska), 
Canada, and Denmark (Greenland and Iceland). But this sector 
principle enjoys no validity under international law and has been 
recognized only in the municipal law of the Soviet Union. The other 
five Arctic states have either refrained from committing themselves 
upon the principle, denied its validity by implication, or openly re- 
jected it in their state papers. Even the Soviet Government has not 
made any attempt to rely upon polar sectorism in its international 
affairs. 
What, then, is the juridical status of the territory in the Arctic 
which is so important for the development of postwar air transport? 
In some instances the reply is relatively simple. Thus, the entire 
island of Greenland belongs to Denmark, as acknowledged in a series 
of declarations made by the United States, Great Britain, France, and 
Japan, 1916-1920, and by the Eastern Greenland Arbitration of 1933 
between Denmark and Norway which recognized the Eirik Raudes 
Land area as belonging to the former. But, according to the recent 
announcements by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secre- 
tary of State Cordell Hull, the island lies in the Western Hemi- 
sphere and therefore comes under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine, 
which prohibits non-American states from acquiring the island. By 
and large, the same is true of Iceland, except that it enjoys an unusual 
autonomous constitutional position with relation to the Danish 
Crown. 
Spitsbergen, together with Bear Island, was recognized as Nor- 
wegian territory by the Spitsbergen Treaty of February 9, 1920, 
following at least a quarter century of dispute involving Germany, 
Great Britain, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Nor- 
way also possesses Jan Mayen Island, having formaily announced the 
extension of its jurisdiction over the island on May 8, 1929. 
Since 1920 the Soviets have taken a more aggressive course of action 
in the Arctic than has any other state. Despite the decree of April 
15, 1926, incorporating the sector principle into its municipal law. 
