THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 35 



Sea cannot well be regarded other than assertions of mare 

 clausum ; and the attitude of the United States, taking shelter 

 behind these early Russian assumptions, necessarily committed 

 her in defence of those claims and principles. Again, the 

 United States, in attempting to justify herself for having ex- 

 ercised an alleged right of search upon vessels of a friendly 

 nation outside of her own legally recognized territorial waters, 

 and in the absence of treaty stipulations authorizing her to do 

 so, necessarily claimed sovereignty over the sea wherein the 

 acts of visit and search had been committed. There can be 

 no right of police over the high seas in times of peace other 

 than as directed against suspected common enemies or pirates, 

 and its exercise m ust jissume proprietorship. 



In the early days of Spanish and Portuguese exploration and 

 conquest, vast oceans were demanded as the property of the 

 State. With the growth of the British navy, certain exag- 

 gerated claims to marine proprietary rights were, for a period, 

 advanced by England ; but the spirit of modern times has 

 been so decidedly hostile to all attempts to establish dominion 

 over the sea that to-day civilized nations are disposed to tol- 

 erate no infraction, however slight, of the broad principle of 

 mare liberum. The ultimate extent to which " territorial 

 waters " may be urged in accordance with the present law of 

 nations, includes only a marine belt of three miles along the 

 open coast, and all harbors arid bays whose openings to the 

 sea do not exceed in width ten to twenty miles, or in general, 

 such inland bodies of water, the narrowness of whose entrances 

 from the sea and whose configuration clearly indicate them 

 to be enclosed seas. The United States has always been con- 

 spicuously foremost in the advocacy of freedom of the high 

 seas ; she was indeed the first to protest against Russian un- 

 willingness to accept these enlightened principles in the Pa- 

 cific. It is to be regretted that in this matter the United 

 States should have appeared before the tribunal and the civ- 

 ilized world in the unfortunate light of taking a step backward 

 in order to resuscitate and reclothe a defunct mediseval doctrine. 



The American case supported the contention that Russia 

 had acquired dominion over Bering Sea by prescription, a 



