In a more general sense, because of the UK's championing of German "theoretical equality" at the World Disarmament Conference, London was in a weak moral position to oppose the German violations. The German response to the UK's complaints about violations of Part V were that they were merely unilaterally exercising rights the UK's delegation at Geneva were prepared to concede to the Reich. In March 1934, a British Foreign Office memo stated "Part V of the Treaty of Versailles... is, for practical purposes, dead, and it would become a putrefying corpse which, if left unburied, would soon poison the political atmosphere of Europe.