QUESTION FIVE. 211 



ground for the assumption of sovereignty, and even in that case the 

 geographical features which may warrant the assumption are too 

 incapable of exact definition to allow of the claim being brought to 

 any other test than that of accepted usage. It is sometimes said and 

 may be historically true that all sovereignty now enjoyed over the 

 littoral sea or certain gulfs is the remnant of the vast claims which, 

 as we have seen, were once made to sovereignty over the open sea, and 

 which it is held have been gradually reduced to a tolerable measure 

 through such intermediate stages as that of the King's Chambers; 

 and the impossibility of putting the claim to gulfs in a definite gen- 

 eral form may be thought favourable to that view. None the less 

 however the rights which are now admitted stand on a basis clear and 

 solid enough to distinguish and support them. 



Professor T. E. Holland, Chichele Professor of International Law 

 at Oxford, in a collection of letters to the " Times " upon " War and 

 Neutrality" published in book form in 1909, discussed, at page 132, 

 this subject of territorial waters. Professor Holland was evidently 

 commenting on views lately expressed by Admiral de Horsey. 



Most authorities would, I think, agree with Admiral de Horsey 

 that the line between " territorial waters " and " the high seas " is 

 drawn by international law, if drawn by it anywhere, at a distance of 

 three miles from low water mark. In the first place the ridiculously 

 wide claims made, on behalf of certain states, by mediaeval jurists 

 were cut down by Grotius to so much water as can be controlled from 

 the land. The Grotian formula was then worked out by Bynkershoek 

 with reference to the range of cannon; and, finally, this somewhat 

 variable test was, before the end of the eighteenth century, as we may 

 see from the judgments of Lord Stowell, superseded by the hard-and- 

 fast rule of the three-mile limit, which has since received ample 

 recognition in treaties, legislation and judicial decisions. 



The subordinate question, also touched upon by the Admiral, of 

 the character to be attributed to bays, the entrance to which exceeds 

 six miles in breadth, presents more difficulty than that relating to 

 strictly coastal waters. I will only say that the Privy Council, in 

 The Direct U. S. Cable Co. v. Anglo-American Telegraph Co. (L. K. 

 2 App. Ca., 394) carefully avoided giving an opinion as to the 

 international law applicable to such bays, but decided the case before 

 them, which had arisen with reference to the Bay of Conception in 

 Newfoundland, on the narrow ground that, as a British court, they 

 were bound by certain assertions of jurisdiction made in British 

 Acts of Parliament. 



The three-mile distance has, no doubt, become inadequate in con- 

 sequence of the increased range of modern cannon, but no other can 

 be substituted for it without express agreement of the Powers. One 

 can hardly admit the view which has been maintained, e. g. by Pro- 

 fessor de 'Martens, that the distance shifts automatically in accord- 

 ance with improvements in artillery. The whole matter might well 

 be included among the questions relating to the rights and duties of 

 neutrals, for the consideration of which by a conference, to be called 

 at an early date, a wish was recorded by The Hague Conference of 

 1899. 



