CHAMBERLAIN, SIR (JOSEPH) AUSTEN (1863 1937), the eldest son of Joseph Chamberlain (q.v.) and of his first wife, Harriet Kenrick, was born at Birmingham on Oct. 16, 1863. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards studied in Paris and Berlin. During the early stages of the Home Rule controversy he acted as his father's private secre tary, and in 1892 was returned unopposed as M.P. for East Wor cestershire. This seat he held until 1914, when, on his father's death, he succeeded him as a member for West Birmingham. "I was born in Birmingham," he said when he was given the freedom of that city in 1926. "I was bred in Birmingham; Birmingham is in my blood and in my bones, and wherever I go and whatever I am, I shall remain a Birmingham man." His maiden speech drew from Gladstone the famous compli ment, uttered in his father's presence, that it was one which must have been "dear and refreshing to a father's heart." After a short apprenticeship as a private member, he was a civil lord of the Admiralty (1895-1900), financial secretary to the Treasury (1900-2) and postmaster-general (1902). This rapid promotion was not due merely to the towering influence of his father, dur ing the days of his great colonial secretaryship. Though the son's powers were of a solid rather than of a showy order, his adminis trative ability and his cogency in debate steadily developed with opportunity. His command of clear statement was exceptional; and he could be unexpectedly formidable in defence. In 1903 he was promoted to the chancellorship of the Exchequer. He ardently espoused his father's fiscal policy of tariff reform, nor did he slacken in its advocacy when Joseph Chamberlain left the Bal four administration in order to prosecute, with less embarrass ment to the prime minister, his unofficial campaign. Unfriendly critics suggested at the time that the son's promotion to the second post in the Government was made in the hope of continuing his father's activities within reasonable bounds and preventing the threatened rupture in the party. This is not an adequate view. The father outside the Cabinet, like the son inside it. wished not to rupture their party but to convert it as a whole to the new doc trine of closer Imperial economic union and tariff-defence at home against foreign protection. Austen Chamberlain remained at the exchequer till the Unionist debacle at the polls in 1906 and there acquired the reputation of being a departmentalist of the best Victorian type—safe, cautious, hard-working, and signally loyal to his associates. This loyalty was unflinching and more than once self-sacrificial.
During the long Liberal domination from 1906 to the World War Austen Chamberlain consolidated his position as a Unionist leader and gained the high esteem of all parties. He suffered, however, a great disappointment when Balfour, faced by the dis content and revolt of the rank and file, resigned his leadership of the Unionist party in 1911. Austen Chamberlain's claims to the succession were well supported. But a slightly stronger section favoured the claims of Walter Long, and as neither would yield to the other, both honourably agreed to the election of Bonar Law.
When the first Coalition Government was formed, in 1915, Austen Chamberlain entered Asquith's Cabinet as secretary of state for India, and held this post until 1917, when he resigned in consequence of the Government's decision to submit to a judicial investigation the charges and criticisms embodied in the report of the Mesopotamia commission. In his view the public interest and his personal honour alike required his resignation, though not one of the charges referred to him. The official responsibilities for the "horrible break-down" of the hospital arrangements during the first advance on Baghdad were incurred without his personal knowledge. His insistence on resignation was over-scrupulous, but showed that his views of what principle and loyalty demand were stricter than the normal. He did not long remain out of office. In April 1918 he became a member of the War Cabinet and after the Armistice returned to the chancellorship of the Exchequer in succession to Bonar Law. His guiding principle during the next two years was to strengthen British credit and pay off debt, and to that end he called upon the taxpayer to make un precedentedly heavy sacrifices, especially in respect of income tax, super-tax and excess profits duty. At the Treasury in a very Brit ish way he preserved an iron tradition of fiscal integrity.
In 1921 Bonar Law's failing health caused his withdrawal from active politics. Austen Chamberlain stepped into the vacant leadership of the House of Commons amid general acclamation. The post carried with it the virtual promise of the leadership of the Conservative party, ten years after the frustration of that chance in 1911. But the restraints and compromises of coalition had already begun to be irksome to many Conservatives, who distrusted the direction in which the Liberal prime minister of the Coalition was leading them. Austen Chamberlain, as lord privy seal and leader of the House, found that his staunch loyalty to his chief was bringing him into disfavour with many of the Con servative rank and file. The complaint was that he did not stand up to Lloyd George with sufficient firmness and that he sacri ficed too many Conservative principles. This feeling was sharply intensified when Austen Chamberlain took a leading part at the end of 1921 in the startling settlement with Sinn Fein and the establishment of the Irish Free State. He pleaded boldly and elo quently for this "act of faith." He had been, indeed, the first to suggest to the prime minister that a choice had to be made be tween negotiations with the rebels and a thorough reconquest of Ireland.
Most of the Conservative party accepted the treaty with re luctance and with forebodings. Party confidence in Austen Cham berlain was further weakened by his steady refusal to listen to suggestions that fidelity to Conservative principles required him to lead his party out of Coalition bondage into party independence and freedom. His view, shared by his principal Conservative col leagues in the Lloyd George administration, was that Coalition was still necessary to deal with the difficult problems of the post-War period and not less to obviate the dangers of a socialist govern ment, which, without co-operation between the two older parties, could not in their view long be averted. When, therefore, the dis contented Conservative Diehards carried their revolt to success, and at the Carlton Club meeting on Oct. 19, 1922, offered the leadership to Bonar Law—who accepted it—Austen Chamberlain once more saw the ruin of his highest chances in politics. He and those of his colleagues who shared his views and quitted office with Lloyd George, naturally had no place in Bonar Law's Cabinet. He remained a private member during Baldwin's first administra tion and during the short period of the succeeding Labour Gov ernment. The dissensions in the Conservative party were gradu ally healed. When Baldwin formed his second administration, at the end of 1924, the post of foreign secretary was accepted by Austen Chamberlain.
Then began a new stage of his career. Thirteen days after he entered on his duties at the Foreign Office (i.e., on Nov. 20, 1924) Sir Lee Stack, governor general of the Sudan and Sirdar of the Egyptian army, was murdered in Cairo. The resultant situation was handled by Austen Chamberlain with a promptness and firm ness that prevented further trouble, and at once established his own prestige as foreign secretary. Without delay he applied him self, at the beginning of 1925, to the remarkable diplomacy which produced the Locarno treaties. That diplomacy was pursued throughout the year, and it was mainly due to his moral earnest ness and determination (for the sceptics abounded) that the treaties were initialled at Locarno on Oct. 16, 1925, Austen Cham berlain's birthday. For the nature of those treaties see article LOCARNO. For the part he had played in this big step towards ' post-War reconciliation in Europe, Austen Chamberlain received the Garter on Nov. 3o, 1925. He increased the general pacific tendency in Europe by making the League of Nations a first con sideration of his policy, himself attending all the meetings of the Council and Assembly. Germany's entry into the League in Sep tember 1926 was an event for which he personally was entitled to much credit. In 1927 his policy in the Chinese crisis was both conciliatory and strong. A military force was sent out to safe guard against possible attack and anarchy the great commercial community of Shanghai, but Great Britain also was the first in the field with proposals for large and increasing concessions to Chinese nationalism.
In May 1927 he reluctantly broke off relations with Russia after the Arcos raid, when it became clear that Bolshevism was violating normal diplomatic rules both in China and Britain. In the summer he initiated discussions with Sarwat Pasha for an Anglo-Egyptian treaty of alliance. A nine months' effort was thwarted early in 1928 by Cairo's repudiation of Sarwat and the emergence of Nahas Pasha as his successor. The failure of the three-Power naval conference at Geneva in July was not directly his responsibility. During the winter of 1927-28 and up to the summer of 1928 his general policy was concerned with a considera tion of Kellogg's proposal for a Peace Pact, which he supported with some reserves as to interpretation, though wholly endorsing its principle. The Pact was duly signed in August. In the autumn of 1928 illness forced him to take a long sea voyage through the Panama Canal to California and thence through Canada home wards. His health had been rapidly restored, but in his absence the Foreign Office was widely attacked for its effort—wrapped in needless mystery—to concert with France joint suggestions to America on the subject of naval limitation. Public criticism made an end of this method, for which the Admiralty and the Cabinet generally were mainly responsible. Sir Austen died Mar. 16, 1937. BIBLIOGRAPHY.-George Glasgow, From Dawes to Locarno (1925) ; A. J. Toynbee, C. A. Macartney and others, Survey of International Affairs (1 926) ; Sir A. Chamberlain, Peace in Our Time: addresses on Europe and the Empire (1928) .