TERRITORIAL SEA


877


while it may be difficult to prove that Ruritania is not entitled to claim
more than three miles, it is equally difficult to prove that if she does
so the United Kingdom, for example, is obliged by international law
to accept her claim.
   4. As you are aware, we at present have a case with Norway under
 examination by the Hague Court. Owing to the fact that the Scandi-
 navian four-mile belt is really older than the three-mile limit, Norway's
 claim to four miles would probably have been more difficult to defeat
 in the Court than any other claim in existence to a limit greater than
 three miles. For this reason in the Norwegian Fisheries case the ques-
 tion which the Court will be deciding is not the breadth of territorial
 waters but the manner in which the complicated coast of territorial
 waters may be measured. Roughly speaking, Norway contends that
 she may measure territorial waters by drawing long lines from head-
 land to headland, thereby enclosing large areas of sea which (accord-
 ing to the United Kingdom view) are not territorial waters at all.
 We are somewhat afraid,1however, that the greater the success of the
 United Kingdom on this issue before the Court, the more likely will
 it be that other States wishing to enclose wide areas of sea will adopt
 the method of claiming a wider territorial beltbecause the Other
 method (that of drawing long lines from headland to headland) will
 have been declared wrong by the judgment of the Hague ,Court.
   5. In future cases which may arise, however, it may'not be possible
to avoid the direct question of the breadth of territorial waters. In
these circumstances we are considering what, if anything, can be done
to render it more likely that a majority at the Hague Court would
decide in favour of a three-mile (or at most a four-mile) limit in the
event of a case being put to them in those terms.
   6. With this object in mind we have been reviewing the tactics
 which the British delegates pursued at the Hague Conference in 1930.'
 There were before that Conference drafts (which had a great deal of
 support) in the first place prescribing three miles as the breadth of
 territorial waters, and secondly admitting a contiguous zone outside
'the three-mile limit in which the littoral state could exercise juris:-
diction over foreign shipping to the extent necessary to protect its
revenue and fiscal interests. The French writer, Gidel (who was both
a French delegate at the Conference and is, perhaps, the greatest
authority on the international law of the sea) says in his book that
if the ardent supporters of the three-mile limit, such as the United
Kingdom, had chosen to accept the proposal relating to the contiguous
zone, they would probably have succeeded in obtaining very wide

  For documentation regarding the Conference for the Codification of Inter-
national Law, held at The Hague, March 13-April 20, 1930, see Foreign Relations,
1930, vol. i, pp. 204 if.