Austen Chamberlain Quotations

Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain (16 October 1863 – 17 March 1937) was a British statesman and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sourced

The combination of the Liberal and Labour Parties is much stronger than the Liberal Party would be if there were no third Party in existence. Many men who would in that case have voted for us voted on this occasion as the Labour Party told them i.e. for the Liberals. The Labour Party has "come to stay"...the existence of the third Party deprives us of the full benefits of the 'swing of the pendulum', introduces a new element into politics and confronts us with a new difficulty.
- Quoted in E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism, 1995.

[I believe in] the throne...parliamentary institutions...private enterprise and individual opinion against the socialization of the state...equity in the distribution of public burdens and strict maintenance of public faith with the creditors of the state [and] a fresh guarantee of peace by an alliance with France and...Belgium for the defence of our common interests against unprovoked attack.
- Speech to the Oxford Carlton Club (March 3, 1922).

The danger which threatens us comes from Labour...Those who think that the Conservative or Unionist Party, standing as such and disavowing its Liberal allies, could return with a working majority are living in a fools paradise and, if they persist, may easily involve themselves and the country in dangers the outcome of which it is hard to predict.
- Letter to Parker Smith (11 October, 1922).

The first thoughts of an Englishman on appointment to the office of Foreign Secretary must be that he speaks in the name, not of Great Britain only, but of the British Dominions beyond the seas, and that it is his imperative duty to preserve in word and act the diplomatic unity of the British Empire. Our interests are one. Our intercourse must be intimate and constant, and we must speak with one voice in the Councils of the world.
- 1924. Quoted in H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Methuen, 1963), p. 40.

The affairs of the world do not stand still...I could not go, as the representative of His Majesty's Government, to meeting after meeting of the League of Nations, to conference after conference with the representatives of foreign countries, and say, 'Great Britain is without a policy. We have not yet been able to meet all the governments of the Empire, and we can do nothing'. That might be possible for an Empire wholly removed from Europe, which existed in a different hemisphere. It was not possible for an Empire the heart of which lies in Europe.
- Speech in the House of Commons, 1925. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), Fifth Series, Vol. 188, cols. 520-1.

I tell you I look forward with terror to her [Germany] making war upon us again in ten years.
- 1925. Quoted in Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain: Vol. II (Cassell, 1940), p. 263.

No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.
- On the Polish Corridor in a letter to Sir Eyre Crowe. (16 February, 1925).

We have a peculair interest because the true defence of our country, owing to scientific development, is now no longer the Channel...but upon the Rhine.
- Speech at the Imperial Conference, 1926.

Scratch me and you will find the Nonconformist.
- 1927. Quoted in Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain: Vol. II (Cassell, 1940), p. 321.

Revision is a dangerous word which should never appear in the mouth of a statesman or in the policy of a government until they are prepared to define very clearly the limits within which they think it should take place. We have revised and revised and what have we got for it? What concession once made has any longer kept the value it had before it was revised? Of which of these concessions can it be said that it has tempered feeling in Germany, that it has produced friendly spirit that those who made it desired to promote?
- Speech in the House of Commons questioning revisions of the Treaty of Versailles (13 April, 1933).

Europe is menaced and Germany afflicted by this narrow exclusive and aggressive spirit by which it is a crime to be in favour of peace, and a crime to be a Jew. That is not a Germany to which we can afford to make concessions, to which Europe can afford to give the equality of which the Prime Minister spoke. The further we advance the further Germany recedes. The more we show her willingness to grant, the higher her demands rise.
- Speech in the House of Commons (27 July, 1936).

Gentlemen do not behave in such a way.
- On the Hoare-Laval Pact 1935. Quoted in Harold Macmillan Winds of Change (Macmillan, 1966), pp. 411-12.

I wonder how many members can realise what [the remilitarisation of the Rhineland] means not merely to the excited politicians in Paris, but to the French peasant in his hovel, to the mother who feels that once again the...peril has come near and that once again her children will be mowed down by the scythe of war.
- Speech in the House of Commons (6 May, 1936).

It was cruelly said of Austen Chamberlain that he always played the game and always lost it. But that is really a tribute to his deep sense of honour and loyalty.
- Harold Macmillan, Winds of Change, p. 174.

Warm-hearted, considerate and generous...incapable of a mean action and conscientious to a fault.
- Sir Anthony Eden, The Eden Memoirs: Facing the Dictators (Cassell, 1962), p. 7.

Quoternity