born in Russia, that child is not an American citizen, because his father never lived here, and under Russian law he is not a Russian subject. Similarly, an illegitimate child born abroad of an American woman does not obtain American citizenship and may not obtain citizenship in the land in which he is born. So, also, persons who have been away from their native countries for a period long enough to deprive them of citizenship under their national laws and who have not acquired citizenship anywhere else are without citizenship. Under the law of the United States mentioned above a naturalized citizen who returns to the country of his origin and remains there two years, or for five years in any other foreign country, is presumed to have ceased to be an American citizen; under this law cases have occurred where a naturalized citizen was held to have lost his United States citizenship, without any suggestion that he had acquired any other citizenship. Under a British law passed in 1870 by which a married woman takes her husband's citizenship and loses her British citizenship, it may happen that though losing her British citizenship she does not under the laws of her husband's country obtain citizenship in it by marrying him; under the Cable law, for example, passed by the Congress of the United States in September, 1922, an American woman citizen does not lose her citizenship by marrying an

alien, nor does an alien woman acquire American citizenship by marrying an American husband; under this law a woman of British nationality marrying an American loses her British nationality and does not acquire American nationality. The Cable law, passed in order to make the status as to citizenship of American women as independent of their marital status as that of American men, has caused difficulty to women of some other nationalities whose laws are similar to the British law. It may be noted that until 1870, the British law was the same as the present American law; until then a British woman marrying an alien retained her British nationality; and British women are making a strong effort to have the British law changed back to what it was for many centuries.

CHAPTER VI

THE RIGHTS OF SOVEREIGN NATIONS

ON THE SEA

1. THE HIGH SEAS

Every nation has a right to navigate the seas, that is the

high seas, outside the territorial jurisdiction called the three-mile limit. In earlier days various nations attempted to claim large adjacent bays, seas, or even oceans, as their own exclusive property. Venice claimed the Adriatic, Genoa claimed the Ligurian Sea, Denmark and Sweden claimed the Baltic Sea, England claimed dominion over the Narrow Seas and the North Sea, and over the seas surrounding her shores from Norway to Cape Finisterre, even as far west as the coast of America. Both England and Denmark claimed the Arctic Sea. At one time Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the Atlantic Ocean by a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands; subsequently the Spaniards claimed the entire Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and Portugal claimed the Indian Ocean and the route around the Cape of Good Hope. All these claims have disappeared, and it is now admitted that the high seas are open to all nations for navigation, deep sea fishing, and submarine cable communication. The principle of mare liberum won over the opposed principle of mare clausum.

Admiralty Law

As it is obviously necessary that there be some

regulation of traffic on the high seas, and as there never has been any lawmaking power with jurisdiction to enact laws for the sea, a sort of common law of the sea has been developed, based partly on conventions and agreements among various nations. In order to prevent collisions, many nations have adopted, by their national laws, identical regulations about lights, signals, the law of the road, courses, and piloting; these regulations are based on a Commercial Code of Signals for the use of all nations made public by Great Britain in 1857. Draft conventions about limitation of the liability of shipowners, maritime mortgages, damages from collisions, etc., were drafted by conferences of maritime states at Washington in 1889 and at Brussels in 1909; the different nations were asked to adopt these conventions in their national law.

Most nations have also ratified international conventions for the suppression of piracy and of the slave trade.

The law that governs on any vessel on the high seas is the law of the nation whose flag the vessel flies, i. e., the nation in which it is registered. Every vessel must be on the register of some nation; each nation determines on what conditions it will admit ships to its register, and its law applies on a ship to which it grants registry. The United States law, for example, regulates the conditions under which crews may be shipped, the watches and hours of labor, the payment of wages,