Chamberlain returned to office in H. H. Asquith's wartime coalition government in May 1915, as Secretary of State for India, but resigned to take responsibility for the disastrous Kut Campaign.

Among others, Austen met and dined with the "Iron Chancellor", Otto von Bismarck, an experience that was to hold a special place in his heart for the duration of his life.

While attending the University of Berlin, Austen developed a suspicion of the growing nationalism in Germany based upon his experience of the lecturing style of Heinrich von Treitschke, who opened up to him "a new side of the German character – a narrow-minded, proud, intolerant Prussian chauvinism", the consequences of which he was later to ponder during the First World War and the crises of the 1930s.

That Chamberlain was speaking against Gladstone's own Second Home Rule Bill does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister, who responded by publicly congratulating both Austen and his father, Joseph, on such an excellent performance.

Appointed a junior Whip of the Liberal Unionists after the general election, Austen's main role was to act as his father's "standard bearer" in matters of policy.

Following the Conservative and Unionist landslide win in the election of 1895, Chamberlain was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty, holding that post until 1900, when he became Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

Austen's appointment was largely a compromise solution to the bitter division of the two Unionist heavyweights, which threatened to split the coalition between supporters of Chamberlain's Imperial Tariff campaign and Balfour's more cautious advocacy of protectionism.

Chamberlain was one of the leading candidates to succeed as Conservative leader even though he was still technically a member of the Liberal Unionist wing of the coalition (the two parties merged formally only in 1912).

The issue that had prompted his father to leave the Liberal Party in the 1880s now threatened to spill over into outright civil war, with the government of H. H. Asquith committed to the passage of a Third Home Rule Bill.

To the strain then was added the death of his father in July 1914, only a few days after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which began the train of events that led to the war.

Like other politicians, including Arthur Balfour and George Curzon, Chamberlain supported the invasion of Mesopotamia to increase British prestige in the region, thus discouraging a German-inspired Muslim revolt in India.

[7] After Lloyd George's Paris speech (12 November 1917) at which he said that "when he saw the appalling casualty lists he wish(ed) it had not been necessary to win so many ("victories")" there was talk of Chamberlain withdrawing support from the government.

Lloyd George survived by claiming that the aim of the new inter-Allied Supreme War Council was purely to "coordinate" policy, not to overrule the British generals, who still enjoyed a good deal of support from Conservatives.

Following the victory of the Lloyd George coalition in the 1918 general election, Chamberlain was again appointed to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer in January 1919 and immediately faced the huge task of restoring Britain's finances after four years of wartime expenditure.

The Lloyd George coalition was beginning to falter, following numerous scandals and the unsuccessful conclusion of the Anglo-Irish War, and it was widely believed that it would not survive until the next general election.

In the autumn of 1922, Chamberlain faced a backbench revolt, largely led by Stanley Baldwin, designed to oust Lloyd George, and when he summoned the Carlton Club meeting 19 October 1922, of Conservative MPs, a motion was passed there for fighting the forthcoming election as an independent party.

In a difficult period in international relations, Chamberlain faced not only a split in the entente cordiale by the French occupation of the Ruhr but also the controversy over the 1924 Geneva Protocol, which threatened to dilute British sovereignty over the issue of League of Nations economic sanctions.

Seeking to maintain the postwar status quo in the West, Chamberlain responded favourably to the approaches of German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann for a British guarantee of Germany's western borders.

Besides promoting Franco-German reconciliation, Chamberlain's main motive was to create a situation in which Germany could pursue territorial revisionism in Eastern Europe peacefully.

[9] Chamberlain's understanding was that if Franco-German relations improved, France would gradually abandon the cordon sanitaire, the French alliance system in Eastern Europe between the wars.

Together with Aristide Briand of France, Chamberlain and Stresemann met at the town of Locarno in October 1925 and signed a mutual agreement (together with representatives from Belgium and Italy) to settle all differences between the nations by arbitration, not war.

From 1934 to 1937, Chamberlain was, with Winston Churchill, Roger Keyes and Leo Amery, the most prominent voice calling for British rearmament in the face of a growing threat from Nazi Germany.

[16]In addition to speaking eloquently in Parliament on the matter, he was the chairman of two Conservative parliamentary delegations in late 1936 that met with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to remonstrate with him about his government's delay in rearming the British defence forces.

Though he never again served in a government, he survived in good health until March 1937, dying just ten weeks before his younger half-brother, Neville, became the first and only member of the Chamberlain dynasty to become prime minister.

In his forties, when he was ready to carve out his own identity, he had to act as a surrogate for his disabled father, whom he resembled in appearance (although he was softer and less wiry, both in face and body) and dress (wearing a monocle, and an orchid in his lapel).

Dutton quotes with approval Leo Amery's verdict written just after Chamberlain's death: 'He just missed greatness and the highest position, but his was a fine life of honourable public service'.

Before the war Chamberlain had been a somewhat reluctant radical, but after 1918 he became more conservative, concerned at the new threat of socialism, and whose dress – he not only wore a monocle and frock coat but was one of the last MPs to wear a top hat inside the Commons Chamber – made him appear a relic from a previous generation.

Dutton suggests that his "exaggerated sense of his own importance and dignity which compounded an already stiff and unbending personal demeanour", came from having to serve under men – Law and Baldwin – whom he regarded as his juniors.