ARGUMENT OF MR. ROOT 371 



But this is put the other way. 



Senator Root: I know; but if you answer that they are not 

 entitled, you say that they are disentitled; you must; that is, that 

 must be the effect of your answer, because the postulate of the 

 question is that commercial privileges are accorded to the United 

 States trading vessels generally. The Tribimal, of course, is not 

 at liberty to say they are not; and the question is entirely irrespec- 

 tive of what they are. The question also assumes that the United 

 States has authorized or may authorize particular vessels to exercise 

 the privileges of trading vessels; that is to say, that the United 

 States makes particular vessels of its own its trading vessels. The 

 question is: Is a vessel which, for convenience, we may as well call 

 what it is — a registered vessel — going to the treaty coast pur- 

 posing to exercise the treaty right, belonging to the general class 

 to which by the postulate of the question trading privileges are 

 accorded, entitled when it gets there to those trading privileges? 

 If not, it must be because there is something in the treaty which 

 excludes it from those privileges. If not, it must be because there 

 is something in the treaty which authorized the government of 

 Newfoundland to discriminate against that vessel. If there is any- 

 thing in the treaty which justifies the discrimination against that 

 vessel, which justifies taking it out of its class and excluding it from 

 the privileges of its class, why, then, the Tribunal will have to say 

 that such a vessel is not entitled. If there is nothing in the treaty 

 which justifies making a discrimination against that vessel, niaking 

 it an exception to the class to which it belongs, to which has been 

 accorded or may hereafter be accorded trading privileges, the 

 Tribunal will, I submit, have to say that the vessel is entitled. The 

 true answer, I submit, is that the treaty neither entitles nor disen- 

 titles any American trading vessel to use the privileges accorded 

 to its class. The treaty does not affect the subject at all. My 

 learned friends say these privileges may be withdrawn. Of course 

 they may be withdrawn; but the postulate of the question is their 

 existence, and their existence is protected by far wider interests 

 than the particular question Sir Robert Bond was so much interested 

 in: the trade between two great nations, affecting many, many 

 millions of people, the relations of kindly f eehng, the enormous 



