AEGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1099 



662 There is another portion of the argument of Sir Charles 

 Russell on p. 317 of this volume that I would like to call to the 

 attention of the Tribunal. 



" It was merely a recognition of a right common to all nations, and 

 as to the fishing on the coast, bays and creeks within the municipal 

 dominion of His Majesty." 



I will content myself with reading one other extract bearing upon 

 this argument of the counsel for Great Britain that there were broad 

 claims put forward as against the United States from which it might 

 be presumed that the area of sea over which Great Britain claimed a 

 right to exercise dominion was so vast, that it would include large 

 bodies of water adjacent to the shore, and therefore include bays. 



Lord Alverstone, the present Chief Justice of England, on p. 544 of 

 this volume XIII of the American reprint of the Fur Seal Arbitra- 

 tion said : 



"Mr. President, if that argument was worth anything at all it 

 means simply this: that Great Britain (and Canada, representing the 

 rights of Great Britain) have either prevented or claimed to prevent 

 the United States from enjoying the rights of fishing outside the 

 three-mile limit or outside territorial waters in the Atlantic. Sir, I 

 will make good what I am about to say by reference, but I assert that 

 since the year 1783 such a contention has been impossible, and if I 

 choose to go back I say that long before that time the contention had 

 disappeared ; but from the year 1783 down to the present time, Brit- 

 ish, French, United States, and for all I know other nationals but 

 these are sufficient for my purpose have been fishing side by side on 

 the banks of Newfoundland 50 or 60 miles from shore, or whatever 

 the distance is, without a shadow of a suggestion that the United 

 States people were there either by grant, by sufferance, by treaty, or 

 in any other way than as exercising the common right of all nations." 



THE PRESIDENT: If you please, Sir: As you recur several times to 

 the Behring Sea Arbitration, may I repeat a question which I asked 

 this morning, and the answer to which you deferred : What was the 

 position that the United States took in the Behring Sea Arbitration 

 concerning its rights as the successor of Russia, in consequence of the 

 treaties of 1824 and 1825 ? 



MR. WARREN : Mr. President, if you will pardon me again, I am not 

 intending to avoid stating fully the position of the United States in 

 the Behring Sea controversy, nor is there any reason for avoiding it. 

 I am going to reply in full to the inferences that might erroneously 

 be drawn from the extracts from the proceedings of the Behring Sea 

 Tribunal printed in the Appendix to the Case of Great Britain sub- 

 mitted to this Tribunal ; but I had not expected at this session to pre- 

 sent my views on that controversy, and have not at this moment 

 before me the necessary books from which I would have to read. 



Sir Robert Finlay did not rely upon the position taken by the 

 United States before the Behring Sea Tribunal to support his con- 



