54 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



drawn from headland to headland." (American Case Appendix, page 

 629). 



Now, it must be stated in the first place that there does not seem to 

 exist any general rule of international law which may be considered final, 

 even in what refers to the marginal belt of territorial waters. The old 

 rule of the cannon-shot, crystallized into the present three marine miles 

 measured from low water mark, may be modified at a later period inas- 

 much as certain nations claim a wider jurisdiction and an extension has 

 already been recommended by the Institute of International Law. There 

 is an obvious reason for that. The marginal strip of territorial waters 

 based originally on the cannon-shot, was founded on the necessity of the 

 riparian State to protect itself from outward attack, by providing some- 

 thing in the nature of an insulating zone, which very reasonably should 

 be extended with the accrued possibility of offense due to the wider range 

 of modern ordnance. In what refers to bays, it has been proposed as a 

 general rule (subject to certain important exceptions) that the marginal 

 belt of territorial waters should follow the sinuosities of the coast more 

 or less in the manner held by the United States in the present contention, 

 so that the marginal belt being of three miles, as in the Treaty under 

 consideration, only such bays should be held as territorial as have an 

 entrance not wider than six miles. (See Sir Thomas Barclay's Report 

 to Institute of International Law, 1894, page 129, in which he also 

 strongly recommends these limits). This is the doctrine which West- 

 lake, the eminent English writer on International Law, has summed 

 up in a very few words : " As to bays, ' ' he says, ' ' if the entrance to one 

 of them is not more than twice the width of the littoral sea enjoyed by 

 the country in question, — that is, not more than six sea miles in the 

 ordinary case, eight in that of Norway, and so forth — there is no access 

 from the open sea to the bay except through the territorial water of that 

 country, and the inner part of the bay will belong to that country no mat- 

 ter how widely it may expand. The line drawn from shore to shore at 

 the part where, in approaching from the open sea, the width first con- 

 tracts to that mentioned, will take the place of the line of low water, and 

 the littoral sea belonging to the State will be measured outwards from 

 that line to the distance of three miles or more, proper to the State"; 

 (Westlake, Vol. I, page 187) . But the learned author takes care to add : 

 "But although this is the general rule it often meets with an exception in 

 the case of bays which penetrate deep into the land and are called gulfs. 

 Many of these are recognized by immemorial usage as territorial sea of 

 the States into which they penetrate, notwithstanding that their entrance 

 is wider than the general rule for bays would give as a limit for such 

 appropriation." And he proceeds to quote as examples of this kind the 

 Bay of Conception in Newfoundland, which he considers as wholly 



