The Week in Parliament Our Parliamentary correspondent writes : Not
probably at any time in post-War history has the death of an elder statesman caused such a sense of personal loss as the passing of Sir Austen Chamberlain. He was no legendary figure from a vanished age, but a man who to the last week of his life had taken his full part in the life of the House and in the cut-and-thrust of debate. In the last five years he had become in a remarkable fashion the leader of the back-benchers, and when revolts against the Government were brewing, the first question necessary to ask in measuring the chances of their success was whether Sir Austen was a supporter or an opponent. The memorial addresses on Wednesday afternoon reached heights of eloquence I have never heard approached in the House. But the phrase that will be remembered when all else is forgotten is that in which Mr. Lloyd George, looking across at the empty corner seat, high up on the third bench below the gangway, pictured him as "the man on the watch tower," the unsleeping guardian of Parliamentary institutions and democratic liberties. * * * *
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