the State could take it away from it, any more than I think it can take it away from the State. I think the State owns it and it cannot take it away from the State. Of course, the extension of the boundary is one thing and the ownership of it is another thing. You must not confuse jurisdiction and ownership.

The State, as I say, under the jurisprudence of the United States, owns the sea bottom within its limits. Therefore, when we extended our boundary we also extended our ownership.

In addition to that, in this same statute, we also declared that we owned the bottom. So we have taken the bottom, and if it did not belong to anybody else, we have taken it.

Mr. ROBSION. Who owned that strip between the 10-mile limit and the 27-mile limit before the recent action of the Louisiana Legislature? Mr. LORET. That did not belong to anybody.

Mr. ROBSION. And you just took it; I mean Louisiana took it.

Mr. LORET. We just took it, and we consider we had a right to take it on account of the fact that the range of artillery has increased considerably.

Mr. MICHENER. The gentleman on my left has suggested that if you are correct, all you need to do is to select your own expert to say just how far a gun would shoot effectively and then establish a line. It would depend upon the expert more than anything else.

Mr. LORET. We consulted a colonel in the United States Reserve, in the Coast Artillery, who is considered quite an authority on the subject of coast artillery, and all artillery in general. We consulted him before we fixed the distance.

Mr. MICHENER. Suppose Massachusetts selected their own expert, and some other State selected still some other expert. One State would go out 50 miles and another State would go out 3 miles. Do you think that is a reasonable way to proceed?

Mr. LORET. I do not think we could own out further than the effective range, whatever it is.

Mr. MICHENER. On the testimony of your own expert? You could not go out farther than defined by the testimony of your own expert? Mr. LORET. NO. We could not go on out further than the general consensus would be, not only of our expert, but the other fellow's experts.

The CHAIRMAN. You would not want to guarantee that title out beyond 3 miles? You just take it, if you can get it; and if you do not get it, then you have not got it.

Mr. LORET. We got 10 miles to begin with. We got 10 miles from Congress.

Mr. MICHENER. You have a powerful lot of respect for your expert. Mr. ROBSION. Pursuing that a little further

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, I do not think we ought to go into this any further. I am sorry that I started it. We have quite a number of witnesses yet to hear, and I do not think we should spend any more time on this.

Mr. LORET. I want to say with regard to the situation in Louisiana and the oil delevopment in the maritime zone, that Louisiana for a number of years has leased her water bottoms out. The State leases them. The development started in the bays along the coast. We have quite a good deal of development in the bays. At the time that

I came to the previous hearing, they were in the process of bringing in an oil well out in the open Gulf. It was brought in a few months ago and is now a producing well. It is located at the western end of the State, where the Gulf coast is straight, with few indentations. It is located a mile and a half from that shore, not in any bay, but just off of the straight coast and not near islands. It is out in the open Gulf, a mile and a half from shore, and it is a producing well now, and the State is receiving royalties.

We have leased some more of the sea bottom and the development, perhaps, has been retarded by the fact that these resolutions have been proposed.

Mr. ROBSION. Did the prospect of oil have anything to do with extending your limit to 27 miles beyond the 3-league limit?

Mr. LORET. When we came here last year arguing against Senate Joint Resolution 208

Mr. WALTER (interposing). I do not want to cut you off, but we have gone over very carefully the only thing that we feel is relevant, and that is in your brief now, and we have a great many people yet to hear. I would appreciate it if you would go to new matter, if you have any to present.

Mr. LORET. I just want to close with these few words. It appears to me that the proponents of these measures are in the position of a certain litigant who appeared before our courts. He attacked a statute on the ground that it was unconstitutional and he alleged quite a number of grounds of unconstitutionality. He alleged so many that the Supreme Court said of his attack that the fact that he had to shoot at it from so many angles convinced them that he did not have any faith in any particular one of them.

The United States seeks to base its claim, the proponents of this measure seek to base their claim to this oil, on first one thing and then another. That would tend to indicate that they do not have much faith in any one of their claims. Their position is that they have heard that there is a lot of oil being extracted from the Pacific Ocean near the coast of California by somebody who they do not think has any right to it, and they think they ought to be stopped. They do not care whether they have the right to it or not, but they think it ought to be stopped. And they want to get it for the Navy. The trouble is they want to get it without paying for it, and we submit that they are just putting up one argument and another in the hope that some one of them may stick. They do not have any faith in any of them, but they hope that some one of them, or all of them together, may stick.

A resolution like this would be a cloud on the State's title to its property and we submit that it should not be adopted. If the Government thinks that it owns this sea bottom, or this oil, it can institute litigation right now against the States that may be taking it and have that matter determined, and we will not be confronted with a declaration by Congress that it thinks the United States may own it and that it wants the Navy to get it, whether the United States owns it or not. That would certainly be prejudicial to our case in asserting our title on purely legal grounds.

We submit that this Congress should not prejudice our case before the courts by adopting any such resolution as this or any other resembling it.

We respectfully submit on behalf of Louisiana that we hope this committee will return an unfavorable report.

Mr. WALTER. Thank you very much.

Mr. TOLAN. The next witness is Mr. Truett, of Florida, Mr. Chair

man.

Mr. WALTER. We shall be glad to hear Mr. Truett.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE A. TRUETT, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. TRUETT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am assistant attorney general of Florida. I appeared at the last hearing before this committee at the express direction of the trustees of the internal improvement fund of the State of Florida. I again appear at their express direction.

Mr. WALTER. Is your position the same as it was last year?

Mr. TRUETT. Only to a certain extent. We have some new thoughts and some new matter that we did not have available last year, on which we should like to proceed.

Mr. WALTER. Will you please confine your remarks to the new matter?

Mr. TRUETT. Absolutely, and I shall be very brief.

Since we were here the last time we have found that several of the departments of the United States have recognized the sovereignty of the State of Florida in and to the particular lands in question.

We feel that these particular lands should not be clouded by any resolution such as has been presented before this committee.

We say that for this reason. We feel that the decisions that have already been made by the Supreme Court of the United States are so clear that they do not admit of any doubt. And why there should be any further litigation at this time it seems to us is altogether beside the point.

Then, too, the departments of this Government-and only through these departments can this Government act-have recognized the fact that the State of Florida owns these particular lands.

We have prepared-and the State engineer will submit this in detail to you so that you can understand it more readily if you are not engineers-certain communications and certain maps from the various departments of our Government.

In one instance, the Land Department said this. This was an application by a man to get certain islands in a navigable river :

The Land Department will not undertake to dispose of lands which may exist between the shore of the river as shown by the plat of 1850 and the actual channel or bed thereof. Such lands are no doubt tide lands which belong to the State by its right of sovereignty.

I think there is a vast distinction between public lands and sovereignty lands. I think that public lands mean those lands that you can take the actual, physical possession of and own as against all the world.

I think that sovereignty lands mean those lands that are under our water highways and are held by the State, subject to the paramount right of the United States Government to regulate commerce and navigation over those waters and that those lands are also held by the State as trustee for the benefit of all the people of that State for its particular purposes; and that that land cannot be given to anybody except with that duty imposed, that if it ever becomes necessary to acquire that land for navigation or commerce, that it can be done.

But I think by virtue of its State sovereignty it gets those particular lands.

Something has been said here about the fact that we ceded to the United States our public lands. We came into the Union under practically the same act as the State of California, if not the same. Now, I do not think that that means that that was right, because I think it goes directly in the teeth of the Supreme Court decisions in various cases that have been cited in our brief and have been orally argued before this committee.

I think that that was only custom that had grown up whereby, when a State was admitted to the Union, it ceded or gave to the United States those lands. I think custom can become a law and I think the custom of the various departments of our Government in recognizing the sovereignty of the State of Florida in these lands has now become a part of our jurisprudence.

You may say that the land in a river is different from land on the ocean. But anticipating that, we have here an application of the War Department for some 300 acres of land at the mouth of the St. Johns River, that extends 234 miles directly into the Atlantic Ocean.

If you are familiar with our jetties there, these jetties were built upon part of that land. As late as March 18, the War Department again requested permission to use some of the submerged land off of the west coast, where our boundaries go out 3 leagues, for the purpose of dumping some material there.

We have any number of instances where the different departments of this Government have recognized the fact that these lands belong to the State of Florida and we say that that custom, having grown up, is just as much a part of the law of this country as if it were written therein. And it is on that basis that we claim the title to this land and ask this committee not to act like the small boy who, in order to wreak his vengeance upon an enemy asked a doctor to give him_the worst disease he could, the one that was most easily transmitted to somebody else, in order that he could give it to his best friend, who could give it to another friend, who could give it to somebody else, who was his enemy, and thereby he was willing to destroy himself, and he was willing to destroy his two friends in order to destroy an

enemy.

Now, we do not think that this committee or this Congress in its attempt to destroy the situation that they said has been created out here in California should destroy State rights and also cloud the title to all of our lands that we think have become so firmly established by the decisions of our Supreme Court, and the construction that has been placed upon it by the departments, and we therefore respect fully

submit that this committee consider this carefully, and we know that you will, and that is all that we ask, and I should like to ask the State engineer at this time to just give you a rough summary of this particular factual brief with it.

Mr. WALTER. I do not think that it is material. It can be incorporated in the record, but I don't think that the engineer's report needs discussion.

Mr. TOLAN. Mr. Elliot, did you want to identify this in any way? Did you want to make any statement here?

STATEMENT OF F. C. ELLIOT, STATE ENGINEER OF FLORIDA

Mr. ELLIOT. I want to leave a memorandum, a copy of a memorandum, with the secretary of the committee, and I have sufficient copies for each member of the committee.

The interest of Florida in this resolution does not arise out of the proposition of oil, for so far no oil has been discovered in Florida, either on the land or under its submerged coastal waters, but the interest of Florida lies in the proposition of title, that the State believes has been in it to the submerged land since it become a State.

We have heard much from the States as to what they believe as to the title. We have heard legal arguments on the proposition of the rights of the States; that has been covered, I think, sufficiently, and we do not attempt to offer anything additional, resting the case of Florida on the case of other States in that respect, but what we offer is new, and is a departure from that which has been offered before.

Believe it or not, the brief raises no legal question, it argues no proposition of rights. It is simply setting forth matters of fact, and those matters of fact comprise three letters from the Interior Department of the United States, one letter from the War Department of the United States, one deed from the State of Florida to the United States, all having reference to the areas which the committee has been discussing for the last 2 days.

Mr. Truett has already reviewed briefly what these letters indicate, and I am not going to offer that part of it again.

The most recent one which he referred to was received at Tallahassee on the 20th of this month. The request from the War Department was that the State provide certain areas for depositing spoiled material out in the Gulf, in the neighborhood of Crystal River, Fla., and while that has not yet been acted upon pursuant to the longestablished policy of the State of Florida, the request of the War Department on behalf of the United States will certainly be granted. In every case that I know of, where the United States has requested an easement or requested a deed, the State has furnished that where it believed it held the title to those bottoms, without cost to the United States, and will continue to do so.

The brief speaks for itself, and I know that there are others to be heard, and unless members of the committee desire to ask questions, that is all that I have.

Mr. TOLAN. I wanted to ask a question. You appear in opposition to these two resolutions, do you?