A SUBSTANTIAL VICTORY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 63, 12 September 1910, Page 6

A SUBSTANTIAL VICTORY.

Tho decision of The Hague International Arbitration Court in the Newfoundland fisheries dispute, which has been engaging its attention since the beginning of June, was reported to us by cable on Friday. Considering the magnitude of the issues involved, the intensity of the feelings which they had aroused, and the fact that their origin dates back nearly a century, we do not think that the court can be reasonably accused of undue delay. To have disposed of the whole business in a little more than three months is really a triumph of despatch on which the court and the parties may be equally congratulated There were upwards of twenty counsel engaged, eight of whom addressed the court, tho leading brief for Great Britain being entrusted to Sir William Robson, the Attorney-General, while Canada and Newfoundland had their own representatives. On the American side the leading counsel was Mr. Elihu Root, who was one of the ablest of Mt. Roosevelt's Ministers, and is now a member of the United States Senate. The arbitrators were Judge Gray, of tho United Slates Supreme Court, Sir Charles Filzpatrick, Chief Justice of Canada, and three- representatives of Argentina, Holland) and Austrb-Hun-gary respectively, the last-named being president. Over 1500 documents wers

submitted to the court, and the appendices to the printed case, which gave the text of all the treaties deemed by the parties to be relevant, included the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the wars of Queen Anno to a, close in 1713. But the arguments of counsel tools a still wider range, going back in some cases as far as to the sixteenth century. It is not to be wondered at that, though the arbitrators stated at tho opening of the case that they had nl- j ready studied it for several month-, thiee months more were needed for tlr> hearing and the determination. It h;is ■ certainly cost a good deal to monopoliso the attention of five arbitrators and some two dozen counsel for so many months, but the whole bill will fall f ar short of th© cost of a single week's war, and it is by war that the only solution would have been found for such a trouble a century ago. The peaceful solution which has at length been reached is, therefore, to be welcomed not merely as a settlement of a long-stand-ing and complicated cause of soreness between the two branches of the Eng-lish-speaking race, but also as strengthening the authority of The Hague Tribunal, and affording to other nations an object-lesson in the adjustment of international differences without recourse to the barbarous and irrelevant test of war. 'Thei-e considerations would supply abundant cause for congratulation whichever way the decision had gone, but in the present case the result is specially gratifying from the British standpoint, because the award is mainly in favour of the British contention. This, however, is almost as much as the singularly unintelligent precis supplied by the Press Association enables us to say. That Britain is considered in New York to have won a substantial victory on "perhaps the two most important points," and the United States to have received a small solatium by scoring on the other five, is all that we are directly told, without any indication as to which the respective points are. A subsequent reference to the satisfaction in London at the recognition of the right of Great Britain to make regulations for the fisheries without America's consent, removes any doubt as to one of the two points on which the British claim has prevailed. The first question submitted to the arbitrators was, whether reasonable regulations made by Great Britain, Canada, and Newfoundland, as long as they were confined to the protection of the fisheries and the maintenance of public order and morals, and did not' discriminate unduly against the inhabitants of the United States, required the consent of the United States Government. This question has evidently been answered in the negative. The contention of the United States was that the Treaty of 1818 had not only limited British sovereignty, but had actually transferred a part of the sovereignty to them — a contention for which, in the absence of any express provision in the treaty, Sir William Robson declared that no precedent had been cited, or could be cited, by counsel for the United States. Britain's sovereignty is now established as practically complete. The second question of -the seven submitted was whether the rights given by the treaty to the inhabitants of the United States extended to non-resident crews of their fishing vessels, but there is nothing in the cablegram to show whether this is considered to be the second in importance. It is, however, clear that Britain has won a substantial victory, whichis a welcome, though not an adequate, set-off to her defeat in the Alaskan arbitration.