One evening near a stuccoed golf club at a cross roads in Upper Green Isle, with the v of the Belfast Lough shining in the distance, I waited to hear Major Moore address a crowd of workers. As the buzzing little audience gathered, boys climbed up telegraph poles with the stickers "We Want Hanna," and a small, pale-faced man with a protruding jaw was the center of a political argument for Hanna. At last the brake arrived. The major, a tall, personable man, stood up in the cart. But all the good old Ulster rallying cries he used, seemed to miss fire.
"Sir Edward Carson's for me—"
"Stand on your own feet, Major Muir," interrupted a worker.
"Heart and soul, I'll fight Home Rule—"
"What aboot Canada, Major Muir?" The major did not reply as he had at a previous meeting at Carrickfergus that he hoped that the time would come when there would be a "truly imperial parliament in London—one that would represent not only the three kingdoms but the whole empire."[7] Instead he went on:
"The Unionist party stands for improved social legislation."
"What aboot old age pensions?" and "Why didn't the Unionist party vote for working-men's compensation, Major Muir?"
As he was preparing to drive away from the booing crowd, one of his supporters began to distribute dodgers. I had two in my hand when the small, pale-faced man with the jaw applied a match to them, and cried out as they flared in my hand:
"That's what we do with trash."
Who won? When the election returns were made public in June, they read:
Major Moore, 7,549; Hanna, 8,714.