36 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHEEIES AEBITEATION. 



Tribunals instituted in virtue of the Convention of 1899 and 19(>7 

 have decided disputes touching all four continents, divided in various 

 realms; differences which have arisen in the north of Europe, in 

 Northern and in Southern America, in Japan, in Arabia, and in 

 Morocco. 



The greatest Powers of the world have submitted by their free will 

 to this court and nations of minor forces have found their protection 

 before it. 



Governments which once had appealed to this high court have 

 intrusted it a second and a third time with the decision of their con- 

 flicts; arbitrators who had been chosen in one case, have been nomi- 

 nated to decide other affairs, certainly the most convincing evidence, 

 I think, that nations have been contented with the work that has 

 been done here. 



Matters of great importance have been adjusted in these modest, 

 provisional rooms, some of them involving the most delicate ques- 

 tions of sovereignty and national pride, all implicating intricate 

 problems of international law. 



But perhaps never till now has tliere been intrusted to an arbitral 

 tribunal a question of such gravity and of so complex a nature as in 

 the present case of almost secular standing. Many of the documents 

 in this case are prior to the independence of the United States of 

 America, some of them go as far back as the seventeenth century. 

 Upwards from 1818, during more than 90 years, the questions impli- 

 cated in the present arbitration have been the subject of almost unin- 

 terrupted diplomatic correspondence and transaction, and more than 

 once they have brought the two great seafaring nations of Europe 

 and America to the verge of the extremities of war. 



And now these two nations, to which the world is indebted for so 

 much of its progress in every sphere of human thought and action, 

 have agreed to submit their long-standing conflict to the arbitration 

 of this Tribunal. 



In doing so, they have expressed their full confidence in this peace- 

 ful mode of resolving international differences, which the first Con- 

 ference of 1899 has recognized as the most efficacious and at the same 

 time the most equitable method of deciding controversies which have 



not been settled by diplomatic means. 

 17 In doing so, these Governments have set an example for the 



whole community of nations and have acquired a new merit 

 in the sublime cause of international justice and peace, to the progress 

 of which they have contributed perhaps more than any other nation, 

 especially under the peaceful reign of a great King, whose premature 

 and sudden loss his vast Empire lamented in the last weeks, and under 

 the presidency of that illustrious statesman who has the historical 

 merit of having initiated the first meeting of this court in the " Pious 

 Fund " case. 



