2 74 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



that if any nation wishes to extend its jurisdiction over a bit of 

 water extending beyond the Kmit of its accepted and accorded 

 territorial zone, it must claim it. It must assert its right. There 

 was not in 1818, and there is not now, any rule of law or any custom 

 of nations under which the large bodies of water indenting the coast 

 of a country are regarded as being within the jurisdiction of the 

 country unless the country asserts her jurisdiction over them, 

 unless the country claims them. 



The general rule of law accords to every country a territorial 

 zone over which it has rights of sovereignty based upon the necessity 

 and the reasonableness of protection. The most general view is 

 that the reasonable width of such a zone is 3 miles. Some countries 

 take a different view, Norway, I think, claiming 4 miles. In the 

 treaty of 1806, to which I shall have to refer again presently, Great 

 Britain and the United States agreed upon 3 miles as the width of 

 such a zone as aU the world was bound to recognize, and upon 5 

 miles that they would recognize as between themselves for the 

 peculiar and special circumstances treated of in that treaty. The 

 Institute of International Law, at its meeting in 1894, expressed 

 the view that 6 miles would be reasonable. But the width is imma- 

 terial to my present argument. Whatever it be, the world accords 

 to every country, as a matter of course, and without its making 

 any assertion of it, or claim to it, a right of sovereignty over the 

 strip of water which surrounds its coast. It was originally fixed by 

 the distance of cannon-shot, and, of course, fixed by measurement 

 from the solid land, because you do not take cannon out in the 

 water and fire them off; you shoot them from the land, and the 3 

 miles, the 4 miles, the 6 miles, whatever it is to be, is a commutation 

 of the old idea of cannon-shot. Great Britain and the United 

 States agreed, as between themselves, that the cannon-shot should 

 be conventionally treated as being 3 miles in length. As the cannon- 

 shot grows longer there is a tendency to increase the width of this 

 zone, for two reasons — because the country can defend itself over 

 a wider zone, and because the country is liable to attack across a 

 wider zone, and therefore it has to keep ships of war farther away. 

 It all comes back to the principle of protection, and, for the purposes 

 of protection without assertion, without claim as a matter of course, 

 to every country the law of nations accords the right of sovereignty 



