Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain was a British statesman and co-winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize for peace. Able, popular, and loyal, he lacked the ruthlessness which was sometimes needed to gain his ends. It was truly said of him by a friendly colleague: "He always played the game and he always lost it."
Background
He was the eldest son of Joseph Chamberlain and half brother of Neville Chamberlain. His upbringing was directed towards public life.
The standard biography is Sir Charles Petrie's Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain (2 vols., 1939-1940).
Education
After attending Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he studied in Paris and Berlin and became his father's private secretary.
Career
He entered Parliament in 1892 and remained a member for the rest of his life, serving first as a Liberal Unionist and after 1895 as a Conservative.
In the ministries of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, Chamberlain was successively civil lord of the admiralty (1895-1900), financial secretary to the treasury (1900-1902), postmaster general (1902), and chancellor of the exchequer (1903-1905). As chancellor, and in opposition after the Conservative defeat in 1905, he inherited his father's role as principal advocate of protective tariffs. In 1911 Arthur Balfour resigned the party leadership and Chamberlain was one of the two principal claimants to the succession, the other being Walter Long, an old-fashioned Tory squire. Deadlock ensued, and both withdrew in favor of Bonar Law.
In 1915 Chamberlain entered H. H. Asquith's first coalition government as secretary for India, resigning two years later because of an adverse report on his department by a paliamentary committee, although no personal blame was imputed. In April 1918 he entered the war cabinet and in 1919 became chancellor of the exchequer in David Lloyd George's coalition government, continuing a policy of reestablishing British finances after the disruptions of the war. On Bonar Law's temporary retirement in 1921, Chamberlain became leader of the Conservative Party and the premiership seemed within his grasp. However, he found party opposition to his faith in the coalition government, especially over the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921, and at the Carlton House meeting of Oct. 19, 1922, the Conservatives decided to withdraw from the coalition. Chamberlain thereupon resigned his leadership.
He remained outside the governments of Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin but returned to office as foreign secretary in Baldwin's second government from 1924 to 1929. Here he reached the climax of his career.
The "Locarno spirit" which Chamberlain tried to engender had as its aim the reconciliation of Germany to the Versailles Treaty of 1918 by frequent meetings with Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand, the German and French foreign ministers, as well as with Mussolini. During this period Chamberlain was instrumental in helping the League of Nations to a period of apparent efficacy, but later events proved that the "Locarno spirit" had never dealt with the genuine differences between the signatories of the pact.
After 1929 Chamberlain held office again only for a short period during the "national government" of Ramsay MacDonald in 1931.
Politics
Served first as a Liberal Unionist and after 1895 as a Conservative