ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 243 



certain special incidents, are the features that exist here: that one 

 nation conveys or assures by conventional stipulation to another 

 independent nation the right to make a use for its own benefit or 

 the benefit of its citizens of the territory of the first nation, limit- 

 ing the sovereignty — and I care not whether it be power or rightful 

 exercise — limiting the scope of sovereignty of the nation that has 

 conferred the right. I conceive, and humbly submit to the Tri- 

 bunal, that it would be a very great misfortune, not merely to the 

 interests of these Ktigants here, both of whom are deeply concerned 

 in having a consistent system of international law maintained and 

 built up, but a very great misfortune to the world if a conclusion 

 were to be reached here which ignores, which sets at naught, which 

 rejects the almost universal testimony of the approved witnesses 

 as to the existence of rules of international law. It would be a 

 misfortune if the judgment here should disappoint the just expecta- 

 tions with which the civiUzed world looks to the decision of a great 

 international tribunal engaged in that administration of justice 

 which should always be not merely a disposal of the rights of the 

 Ktigants, but a constructive force in the building up of a system 

 to assure justice in future times and in future disputes between 

 nations. 



We cannot shuffle off the relation of the rule to which I have 

 referred to the construction of this instrument by treating the great 

 founders and expounders of international law as freaks in a museum 

 of antiquities. 



I have said that the essential quality of this special class of rights, 

 granted by convention between two independent nations and 

 having a perpetual quality in the right granted, is the restriction of 

 sovereignty. Let me give a few of the brief expressions of that idea 

 by the witnesses whom we have called. 



BluntschU says: 



"The name of international servitudes is given to every conventional 

 and perpetual restriction affecting the territorial sovereignty of a state in 

 favor of another state." • 



Bonfils says: 



"The servitudes called conventional alone constitute veritable restrictions 

 upon the free exercise of internal sovereignty for the benefit of other states." 



