ABSTRACT
The summit of Locarno towers so high in the career of Austen Chamberlain that it is easy to forget that he remained on as Foreign Secretary for nearly four more years after its signature. Chamberlain himself fully recognised that much remained to be done, that there were other peaks to conquer. Chamberlain remained almost totally immersed in the affairs of the Foreign Office throughout Baldwin’s second government. The only exceptions came at the end of 1926 when Chamberlain acted briefly as Home Secretary in the absence of Joynson-Hicks and in the summer of 1927 when he deputised for Baldwin who was in Canada. In the event the crisis was averted, but the conviction was gaining ground inside the Foreign Office that Lloyd was intent upon manufacturing a crisis in order to create the sort of situation in which Britain’s will could be imposed.
