 In his opinion, a powerful England was a factor for peace and a disarmed Britain would have no more influence for peace in Europe than it had in the Far East, with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.Joad delivered what was described as a "tour de force of pacifist rhetoric".He claimed that the motion really meant "that this House will never commit murder on a huge scale whenever the Government decided it should do so" and argued that although limited wars might have been justified in the past, the scale of destruction now possible with modern weapons meant that war had become unthinkable.