Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/95

Rh taking seals, and one not inconsistent with the continued preservation of the herd in normal extent. The several methods by which this was sought to be accomplished were striking illustrations of how far the work of the joint commission departed from the lines along which it was originally laid out, leaving the region of scientific investigation for that of partisanship and diplomacy.

As every one knows, the whole question with the joint and separate reports of the commissions went to arbitration before the tribunal at Paris in the summer of 1893. The report of the American commissioners was completed and submitted about the middle of April, 1892; that of their British colleagues was received by Lord Salisbury on August 14th. These dates are significant. In recent diplomatic correspondence relating to the present state of the controversy there has appeared a vigorous protest against a policy of delay in submitting reports which were to be simultaneous or concurrent, and it has been plainly intimated that advantages are expected to accrue from such delay. This is but history repeating itself. The strictures of Messrs. Phelps, Carter, Blodgett, and Coudert, counsel for the United States in 1893, upon the great and unjust advantage taken by the Government of Great Britain in this way might furnish useful, if not interesting, reading for some of the severer critics of the recent action of the Department of State.

The Bering-Sea arbitration, with its disastrous consequences to the sealing industry, can hardly be referred to with satisfaction by those who so earnestly desire the reference of all international disputes to similar tribunals. It serves, however, as an excellent illustration of the fact that international arbitration is now and must be for a long time little more than an elaborate and costly means of reaching a compromise. The Paris award gave to the United States somewhat more protection of seal life than Great Britain had offered through her commissioners, but vastly less than was asked as necessary and just. The British commissioners had suggested a protected zone about the islands of ten miles width, and were willing to consider a close season during that period in which pelagic sealing is unprofitable; the arbitration tribunal gave a zone of sixty miles and a close season of possible consequence, if only it could be enforced, together with a few minor restrictions which have proved to be of really little value. It is difficult to find a compromise between life and death, and even so dignified and learned a body as the Paris tribunal failed in this instance. The experience of three or four years has shown the signal failure of the remedies proposed. And this must not be attributed alone to the lack of perfect application of these remedies. The United States has maintained a fleet of Bering-Sea police at once efficient and expensive. Great Britain