This occasion, when he arrived on the 10th by the Liverpool steamer, accompanied by Mr. Walter Long, was no exception.  His route had been announced in the Press.  Countless Union Jacks were displayed in every village along both shores of the Lough.  Every vessel at anchor, including the gigantic White Star Liner Britannic, was dressed; every fog-horn bellowed a welcome; the multitude of men at work in the great ship-yards crowded to places commanding a view of the incoming packet, and waved handkerchiefs and raised cheers for Sir Edward; fellow passengers jostled each other to get sight of him as he went down the gangway and to give him a parting cheer from the deck; the dock sheds were packed with people, many of them bare-headed and bare-footed women, who pressed close in the hope of touching his hand, or hearing one of his kindly and humorous greetings.  It was the same in the streets all the way from the docks to the centre of the city, and out through the working-class district of Ballymacarret to the country beyond, and in every hamlet on the road to Newtownards and Mount Stewart—­people congregating to give him a cheer as he passed in Lord Londonderry’s motor-car, or pausing in their work on the land to wave a greeting from fields bordering the road.

Radical newspapers in England believed—­or at any rate tried to make their readers believe—­that the “Northcliffe Press,” particularly The Times and Daily Mail, gave an exaggerated account of these extraordinary demonstrations of welcome to Carson, and of the impressiveness of the great meetings which he addressed.  But the accounts in Lord Northcliffe’s papers did not differ materially from those in other journals like The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Standard, The Morning Post, The Observer, The Scotsman, and The Spectator.  There was no exaggeration.  The special correspondents gave faithful accounts of what they saw and heard, and no more.  Editorial support was a different matter.  Lord Northcliffe’s papers were unfailing in their support of the Ulster cause, as were many other great British journals; and even when at a later period Lord Northcliffe’s attitude on the general question of Irish government underwent a change that was profoundly disappointing to Ulstermen, his papers never countenanced the idea of applying coercion to Ulster.  In the years 1911 to 1914 The Times remained true to the tradition started by John Walter, who, himself a Liberal, went personally to Belfast in 1886 to inform himself on the question, then for the first time raised by Gladstone; and, having done so, supported the loyalist cause in Ireland till his death.  A series of weighty articles in 1913 and 1914 approved and encouraged the resistance threatened by Ulster to Home Rule, and justified the measures taken in preparation for it.  Whatever may have been the reason for a different attitude at a later date, Ulster owed a debt of gratitude to The Times in those troubled years.