Today -100: May 28, 1914: Of recruiting, ypirangas, and mice

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan tells a banquet of the National Foreign Trade Convention that the US government won’t necessarily interfere by force in other nations to protect American business interests. Yeah, right.

Huerta issues a decree allowing anyone to enter the militia with a rank dependent not on ability but on the number of recruits they bring in and equip: 100 recruits and you’re a major, 150 a lt. colonel, 200 a full colonel.

Huerta’s former interior minister Aureliano Urrutia has fled to Texas, a sure sign of desperation. He wants to become a US citizen. He says Huerta must resign and the US should establish a military protectorate over Mexico. The Constitutionalists claim, in a very detailed and highly unlikely story, that Urrutia, a doctor, once helped Huerta cut out the tongue of a senator, and is in the US on some secret mission.

The Ypiranga (and another German ship, the Bavaria) unload their cargo of rifles, machine guns and ammunition for the Huerta forces in Puerto Mexico, and there’s nothing the US can legally do about it.

Constitutionalists confiscate five coal mines owned by French and American firms.

Aaaaand Mrs. Pankhurst is out of prison again, like a militant yo-yo. She’s got them too scared to forcibly feed her when she goes on hunger strike.

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