to be fighting, Crawford was going to be ready for it, and thought that preparation for such a contingency could not begin too soon.  And the advertisements were not barren of practical result.  There was an astonishing number of replies; Crawford purchased a few rifles, and obtained samples of others; and, what was more important, he gained knowledge of the Continental trade in second-hand firearms, which had its centre in the free port of Hamburg, and of the men engaged in that trade.  This knowledge he turned to account in 1912 and the two following years.

He had been for nearly twenty years an officer of Artillery Militia, and when the U.V.F. was organised in 1912 he became its Director of Ordnance on the headquarters staff.  He was also a member of the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council, where he persistently advocated preparation for armed resistance long before most of his colleagues thought such a policy necessary.  But early in 1912 he obtained leave to get samples of procurable firearms, and his promptitude in acting on it, and in presenting before certain members of the Committee a collection of gleaming rifles with bayonets fixed, took away the breath of the more cautious of his colleagues.

From this time forward Crawford was frequently engaged in this business.  He got into communication with the dealers in arms whose acquaintance he had made six years before.  He went himself to Hamburg, and, after learning something of the chicanery prevalent in the trade, which it took all his resourcefulness to overcome, he fell in with an honest Jew by whose help he succeeded in sending a thousand rifles safely to Belfast.  Other consignments followed from time to time in larger or smaller quantities, in the transport of which all the devices of old-time smuggling were put to the test.  Crawford bought a schooner, which for a year or more proved very useful, and, while employing her in bringing arms to Ulster, he made acquaintance with a skipper of one of the Antrim Iron Ore Company’s coasting steamers, whose name was Agnew, a fine seaman of the best type produced by the British Mercantile Marine, who afterwards proved an invaluable ally, to whose loyalty and ability Crawford and Ulster owed a deep debt of gratitude, as they also did to Mr. Robert Browne, Managing Director of the Antrim Iron Ore Company, for placing at their disposal both vessels and seamen from time to time.

Now and then the goods fell a victim to Custom House vigilance; for although there was at this time nothing illegal in importing firearms, it was not considered prudent to carry on the trade openly, which would certainly have led to prohibition being introduced and enforced; and, consequently, infringements of shipping regulations had to be risked, which gave the authorities the right to interfere if they discovered rifles where zinc plates or musical instruments ought to have been.