ABSTRACT
When England went to war with Germany on 4 August 1914, Austen Chamberlain had been out of office for the best part of nine years. With his failure to secure the leadership of his party in 1911 and his subsequent partial eclipse from the inner councils of Unionist policy-making, his career appeared to have passed its peak and to be in decline. Chamberlain was among those who believed that Britain’s tacit obligations to France and Russia constituted a commitment of honour which would oblige the government to declare war on Germany in the event that the latter attacked France. In the first days of the war there was little thought given to anything as novel as the formation of a coalition government. It would be, as the Prime Minister said, ‘business as usual’ in the widely shared optimism that the whole matter would be settled by Christmas.
