The increasing number of claims by various states to submarine areas beneath the high seas has recently raised anew the question of the status of such claims in international law. The importance of the problem, with its possible impact on traditional legal concepts, has attracted the attention of writers and of several bodies interested in the development of international law, including the International Law Commission of the United Nations. It is to be hoped that out of the present ferment will emerge some sound legal principles which will reconcile new needs with established patterns in such a manner as to win general assent. To this end it may be useful, now that there are some years of state practice and learned discussion to draw upon, to comment on various views that have been advanced.

“… Since it is essential that all frontiers, whether on land or at sea, should be certain and definite, all rights which depend for their exercise upon territorial sovereignty must be valid up to a given line and there stop.” Very rarely, however, in treaties or in national laws are descriptions of water “boundaries” sufficiently precise to enable an engineer to lay them down on hydrographic charts, or to “demarcate” them in the waters themselves. About all one can say is that, if the base line is agreed upon, the outer limit of the territorial sea is acceptedas the envelope of the arcs of circles having a radius of three nautical miles (or any other agreed-upon limit) drawn from all points on the coast. The remark of Professor Riesenfeld may therefore be recalled: “It can probably be said without exaggeration that the law of territorial waters has been one of the most unsatisfactory portions of international law.”

Hitler had been recognized by all foreign governments. Also during the last war the recognition was not withdrawn. One has therefore to assume that, from the point of view of international law, Hitler was the lawful government and representative of Germany. For the purposes of this article we need not deal with the question whether, according to German public law, he came to power, for instance, by means of a coup d'état or a perjury.

The International Labor Organization (hereafter referred to as the ILO) was established by the peace treaties concluded at the close of World War I as an autonomous part of the League of Nations for the purpose of promoting social justice.