Continuing my review of great, short speeches, I would be remiss if I didn't include English Prime Minister Winston Churchill's address to Parliament on May 13, 1940, just after he had assumed office and in the face of the Nazi aggression. 

After some brief opening comments about forming the new government, he gets right down to business: 

We are in the preliminary phase of one of the greatest battles in history.  We are in action at many other points — in Norway and in Holland — and we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean.  The air battle is continuing, and many preparation have to be made here at home. 

What Churchill profoundly grasped before many of his countrymen and most of the citizens of the United States was that total war was once again happening in Europe (and soon in Asia), unthinkably soon after the Great War had concluded.  Many people were blind to the threat because they didn't want to face the spectacle again of such devastating war — and who could blaim them for that?

Churchill's way of handling this difficult rhetorical challenge is to be direct and simple:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.  We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.  We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. 

Can you imagine a modern-day politician being that honest and blunt?  Yet the rhetorical lesson here is that when there is bad news to deliver, it is best to come straight to the point. 

Once that is out of the way, it is possible to soar, a little:

You ask, what is our aim?  I can answer in one word.  It is victory.  Victory at all costs — victory in spite of all terrors — victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. 

Even this rhetoric is profoundly simple, drawing its power from the repetition of the word 'victory'.  The phrase "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" has of course entered the language, often modified to "blood, sweat and tears" because the flow is better.  But the bluntness, and the courage, was Chuchill's, and his speech is an example of rhetoric at its finest, simplest, and most powerful.