The Mena weekly star., 1918-08-29

< WHO Wtu bc NuiANtttCN WANA At3 NN%tNht Since l have been in prison I have been brought to the realization of matters and circumstances I had lit- tle opportunity of learning before, but in the fight in the mountains near Mena I had different ideas. These ideas were my honest beliefs, and fought in defense of them"
 Coughran is young man. Just few days ago, while still in the death cell, he celebrated his twenty eighth birthday. He was born in the mountains of Missouri and when he was one year old his family moved to the mountains of Arkansas. With the exception of few years spent in Ok lahoma, he has spent his entire life in the mountains And, from the standpoint of the mountain man, he talked Wednesday, and talked with the pure diction, coherency and logic of the man who has devoted no little time to the improvement of his mind.
 "It is the people who do not know us," he said, "who stamp us as al- together ignorant and altogether dis loyal have been in the cities lit- tie, and believe that ignorance there is fully as widespread as it is in the mountains. The mountain man, given the opportunity, acquires the funda- mentals more completely than the city man, but the city man beats him on the superficial things.
 I was born into a Socialist fam fly and brought up on Socialism. My father died when I was IS and the support of our mother devolved upon us boys 1 am stronger physically than my brothers, and much of the work fell on me We had a hard time. When there was a lack of work around home, l went out working wherever I could find work. Every day of hard labor I put in, out of which I received only a small per centage of the actual yield, confirmed me in the Socialistic beliefs in which had been brought up. When this war broke out it was my sincere, hon. est conviction that it was a rich mans war. a war being waged by the Euro pean powers for their own benefit, and in which the poor man, the com mon soldiers, were used simply as pawns.
 q believe that is, or at least was, the attitude of many mountain men. Many men with whom 1 have talked have told me that they believed so, and yet know that deep down these men are as patriotic as any in the world. In my case, resistence to the draft was thru a firm conviction that l was acting for my nations good in trying to keep it out of rich mans war It is history that no nation has ever had any better, braver fighters than it's mountaineers. They are the first to respond to just cause, or when their freedom is at stake, but just as any other isolated people they cannot always tell when it is g just cause, and many of us could mol see how war fought in Europe could imperil our freedom I do not say this of all mountain sections, nor of al people in the sections of which have personal knowledge, but 1 dC know that the doctrine of rich man: war, a war of the munition makers, { war to reduce the growing power oi the laboring classes found ready lis teners. And when the draft law be came effective, to some of us it ap peared an effort to force us into tho war. You can't force mountain men You can't force anybody who is not afraid to die, and the mountaineers are not afraid.
 "If all of us understood matters as they are, if all of us could see as clearly as l now see, there would b, no draft resistance in the mountains If we had been shown by people W, know. and in whom we have conf dence, that the draft law was for tn nations good, that it was not forcins
 us into war for profit, we would have gone.
 "As it is with the draft law, so i
 is with other laws. Mountain mel , make moonshine liquor; they vio late the stock laws; they kill gam , out of season, if they need meat, an, it is probable that few of them do i just because they are criminally in , clined They simply do not under , stand why these laws should be. Ul
 there in the mountains we do no
 have the facilities of education tha exists in the cities. We do not com
 in contact with new people and new : ideas. We do not see the changinI conditions. What we do see is simpl, the law itself, and no man wants t
 submit to law which in his belle cuts down his rights without reason "I believe that if the teachers il
 our schools could take up the law and explain them, why they are nee essarv, and what their real purpose
 are, they would have fine effect.
 believe, too, that if an honest maI who has lived all his life in the noun tains who knows not only what tn, mountain people think, but also why they think as they do. could go into these districts where there is resist ance to the draft, and accomplish more than all the posses in the state He would have to be a man in whom the mountaineers, his own people, had confidence, and he would have to be able to explain to them in their own language. and following their own trend of thought"
 q believe" he said. speaking as from the far distance of his thouehts, 'that could be that man. But-the state has another duty for me"