Copy of a letter from [Joseph] Austen Chamberlain (9 Egerton Place [London]) to WSC, regretting that WSC did not agree with his message to the Mayor of Birmingham [saying that he and WSC would not be able to come to a meeting on the Irish question, which must be indefinitely postponed]. Chamberlain reminds WSC that he had told him that this was the only way he could find which did not anticipate a statement which the Prime Minister [Herbert Asquith, later 1st Lord Oxford and Asquith] was due to make on the following day, and WSC had not objected at the time. He adds that he accepted full responsibility, and believed that it was his duty to be in the House of Commons for Asquith's statement. Chamberlain then comments on WSC's last letter to him [see CHAR 2/364/14-15], on a proposal by the Opposition. Chamberlain says that WSC was mistaken, and the proposal was that all controversial legislation should be postponed until after the war, then resumed at the point it had reached when war broke out. The Government had refused this, even though it was the only way of carrying out Asquith's expressed intention that all parties should keep their position despite having to support the Government during the war. What WSC said was the Opposition's proposal had actually come from Asquith, and had been reluctantly agreed to for the sake of unity during the war, but had then been rejected by the Government, which insisted on another proposal which the Opposition had not agreed to. Chamberlain notes that WSC said there was no practical difference between the two, and in that case asks why the Government was insisting upon the one which wasn't acceptable to the Opposition. Chamberlain also notes that WSC now said that force would not be used against the Ulstermen in any circumstances, though Asquith had not mentioned this to Andrew Bonar Law [Leader of the Opposition]. He ends by agreeing that the Government had a right to the support of the Opposition during the war, and states that they would do all they could to support the national defence, but remarks that WSC must wish that his party had an equally good record for the last great war. Typescript, sent by Sir Charles Petrie for inclusion in his biography of Chamberlain.