them; and the impetuous spirits, who chafe at
half-measures, cannot endure temporising, and are impatient for the
order to advance against any odds. Major F.H. Crawford had more of the
temperament of a Hotspur than of a Fabius, but he nevertheless possessed
qualities of patience, reticence, discretion, and coolness which
enabled him to render invaluable service to the Ulster cause in an
enterprise that would certainly have miscarried in the hands of a man
endowed only with impetuosity and reckless courage. If the story of his
adventures in procuring arms for the U.V.F. be ever told in minute
detail, it will present all the features of an exciting novel by Mr.
John Buchan.

Fred Crawford, the man who followed a family tradition when he signed
the Covenant with his own blood,[84] began life as a premium apprentice
in Harland and Wolf's great ship-building yard, after which he served
for a year as an engineer in the White Star Line, before settling down
to his father's manufacturing business in Belfast. Like so many ardent
Loyalists in Ulster, he came of Liberal stock. He was for years honorary
Secretary of the Reform Club in Belfast. The more staid members of this
highly respectable establishment were not a little startled and
perplexed when it was brought to their attention in 1907 that
advertisements in the name of one "Hugh Matthews," giving the Belfast
Reform Club as his address, had appeared in a number of foreign
newspapers--French, Belgian, Italian, German, and Austrian--inquiring
for "10,000 rifles and one million rounds of small-arm ammunition." The
membership of the Club included no Hugh Matthews; but inquiry showed
that the name covered the identity of the Hon. Secretary; and Crawford,
who sought no concealment in the matter, justified the advertisements by
pointing out that the Liberal Government which had lately come into
power had begun its rule in Ireland by repealing the Act prohibiting the
importation of arms, and that there was therefore nothing illegal in
what he was doing. But he resigned his secretaryship, which he felt
might hamper future transactions of the same kind. The advertisement was
no doubt half bravado and half practical joke; he wanted to see whether
it would attract notice, and if anything would come of it. But it had
also an element of serious purpose.

Crawford regarded the advent to power of the Liberal Party as ominous,
as indeed all Ulster did, for the Liberal Party was a Home Rule