After Philip Noel-Baker's opening speech on 21 June 1938, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, replied for the government. He began by touching briefly on the Japanese invasion of China, in a way which interestingly foreshadowed something he said just over three months later:
if it were not that China is so far away and the scenes which are taking place there are so remote from our everyday consciousness, I think the sentiments of pity, [horror] and indignation which would be aroused by a full appreciation of those events might drive this people to courses which perhaps they have never yet contemplated.
In response to Noel-Baker's comments about the status of aerial warfare in international law, Chamberlain agreed that 'new weapons [don't] make new laws', but added that new weapons create new circumstances which the old laws may not cover. That is, the laws of war 'do not entirely meet the case which we have to meet to-day'. Having said that, he believes there are 'three principles of international law which are as applicable to warfare from the air as they are to war at sea or on land':
In the first place, it is against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks upon civilian populations. That is undoubtedly a violation of international law. In the second place, targets which are aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be capable of identification. In the third place, reasonable care must be taken in attacking those military objectives so that by carelessness a civilian population in the neighbourhood is not bombed.