Today -100: December 5, 1913: Of beautifully gowned anti-suffragists, firing squads, arrests at sea, and lack of confidence

Anti-suffrage women descend on Washington D.C. to lobby against the creation of a permanent suffrage committee in Congress. They are, the NYT feels impelled to inform us, “beautifully gowned.” Also present: Everett Pepperrell Wheeler of the “Man Suffrage Association,” who says “clenched fists,” such as Anna Howard Shaw waved yesterday, “mean fight.... but if [men] are challenged to fight this movement there will be blows to give as well as blows to take.” The first rule of Suffrage Fight Club is you do not talk about Suffrage Fight Club.

The United States will assist the Dominican Republic in organizing elections. The US ambassador “has already notified the restless and turbulent elements in Santo Domingo that the long period of revolutionary disturbances must cease”.

Mexican Federal Col. Exiquio Barbosa survives a mass execution by firing squad, plays dead, and escapes.

You know who would really be helpful in resolving the Mexican revolution? Former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz. Well, that’s what current Mexican dictator Huerta thinks, for some reason, and he’s placed the 83-year-old exile on the army’s active list and will try to force him to return from France. This could all be a rumor, though, and Díaz plans to stay where he is.

British police succeed in arresting Emmeline Pankhurst by boarding her trans-Atlantic ship before it reached port in Plymouth, where a bodyguard was waiting to protect her. The suffragettes had their own boat to remove Mrs P before her ship reached dock, but two navy ships were deployed to block it, which seems like an awful lot of trouble. She begins a hunger and thirst strike.

The Reichstag passes a resolution of lack of confidence in Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg by a vote of 293-54, over the bad relations between the army and the people in Zabern, Alsace. This is constitutionally irrelevant, since cabinet officials are responsible to the kaiser rather than to the Reichstag.

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