INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS OF FISHERIES ON THE HIGH SEAS. IOI 
any opportunity of breaking it with impunity. The spirit underlying the con- 
ventions between Great Britain and France as regards the English Channel on 
the one hand, and between Great Britain and other powers as regards the 
North Sea on the other, is precisely the same, namely, a desire to secure to 
the subjects of each separate state the same protection from injury on the high 
seas that they would expect within the territorial domain of their respective gov- 
ernments. But the machinery for giving effect to this spirit is less complete in 
the case of the earlier conventions, and the result is that the same men who in 
the North Sea are careful to observe the law are apt to disregard its principles 
as soon as they cross the line which divides the North Sea from the English 
Channel, and as long as they are outside the line which separates territorial from 
nonterritorial waters. 
The moral of this appears to be that, once the authorities are agreed that good 
cause for interference exists, it is easy to take and to enforce the necessary meas- 
ures provided they are based on the generally accepted principles of law, order, 
and morality, and as long as they are founded on sufficient evidence as to the 
habits of fish and the effect of man’s operations. Differences in legal procedure 
and practice involve a certain amount of difficulty, but in the cases above quoted 
this has been practically overcome by providing that a person charged with an 
offense shall be tried in the courts of the country to which he belongs, whatever 
the nationality of the officer arresting him. In this way mutual confidence in 
the sincerity of the authorities of the various contracting powers has been 
inspired; and with increasing evidence of a determination to maintain the ordi- 
nary principles of justice and right there have been displayed on the part of the 
fishermen themselves both a more general appreciation of the value of interna- 
tional regulations and also a sense of the greater security with which they can 
carry on their industry further and further afield—and this, after all, is only one 
indication of the increasing prosperity of the industry, which it is the ultimate 
aim and object of all such regulations to secure. 
INCREASING NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT. 
Nevertheless, the greater the success of such regulations in this direction the 
greater is the variety of other interestsinvolved. The further afield the fishermen 
of any State go, the more certainly will they be brought into closer relations with 
the fishermen of fresh nationalities, and the longer will be the list of States which 
find that they have interests in common-—interests which will, sooner or later, 
call for combined action in the direction of international regulation of the 
fisheries on the high seas. Whether such regulations should aim at the pro- 
tection of the fishermen—either in their lives, their property, or their morals— 
or at the protection of the fisheries against overfishing must depend on circum- 
stances. So far as experience goes, the first object is the one most likely both 
