His Views On Irish Home Rule
In the last years before the outbreak of the Great War, Chamberlain was concerned with one issue above all others: Home Rule for Ireland. The issue that had prompted his father to split the Liberal Party in the 1880s now threatened to spill over into outright civil war, with the government of Herbert Asquith committed to the passage of a Third Home Rule Bill. Chamberlain was resolutely opposed to the dissolution of the Union with Ireland, and to the strain of these years was added the death of his father in July 1914, only a few days after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand began the train of events that led to the First World War.
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