18 JANUARY 1935, Page 3

A Forgotten Dispute Arbitration proceedings are apt to move with

a certain stately deliberation, and the announcement that the international commission appointed to investigate the sinking of the Canadian vessel ' I'm Alone ' by a U.S.A. coastguard vessel in 1929' has awarded $30,000 damages against the U.S.A. authorities comes so long - after the incident which gave rise to the commission's appoint- ment that the circumstances are all but forgotten. Yet the affair made considerable stir at the time. The `I'm Alone' was avowedly engaged in liquor smuggling, but she was pursued to a point two hundred miles from the American coast before she was sunk by shots from the coastguard-boat Dexter.' The contention that so long as a chase began within the twelve-mile limit (fixed by a special convention between Great Britain and the United States), any action taken by the pursuers was lawful never looked like appealing to impartial jurists. But the outcome of the affair is less important than the procedure followed. Though the incident was sensational, tempers on neither side ever ran high, because the settlement of the affair by arbitration was certain,

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