All the arms they obtained were paid for, and their only crime was that they successfully hoodwinked Mr.Asquith's colleagues and agents.
Every movement has its Fabius, and also its Hotspur.

Both are needed--the men of prudence and caution, anxious to avoid extreme courses, slow to commit themselves too far or to burn their boats with the river behind 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.