“I haven’t changed my opinion,” said the Princetonian, “and only recently I had to brush up my Greek to enable me to refresh my recollection of some of the Philippics.”
The Princeton professor was Woodrow Wilson.
When I told this story to my wife, who was both my kindest and severest critic, she immediately secured and placed on my desk, without any comment, a translation of Demosthenes. Inspired by its perusal, I dared to face a great audience in Buffalo and deliver an opening address for the Liberty Loans.
I said to Cummings: “Now, as President Wilson is returning to Europe, you, Homer, ought to be the Demosthenes of the Democratic Party.”
Cummings took fire. “I believe I can do it,” he cried.
He was the man for it. Physically big, with a commanding presence and a good delivery, his experience as a member of the Democratic National Committee, his campaigns for Mayor of Stamford and Senator from Connecticut, and his successful service as state’s attorney for Fairfield County in that state, had qualified him long since for brilliant public speaking, and latterly for public speaking of the denunciatory sort.
We consulted Demosthenes. We analyzed the Fourth Philippic.
Cummings’s eyes flashed, as he exclaimed:
“I can do it! I can do it!”
The opening was to be a vindication of the Democratic Party throughout the war and the subsequent peace negotiations: the peroration, a denunciation of the opposition.