we are here to-day to approve and celebrate, are chiefly these. First, it may be that the genius of the Jewish race will again be able to give the world a brilliant and distinctive civilization. The richness of mankind lies in its diversity. We do not want the world to be like some great library, consisting of nothing but innumerable copies of one and the same book. The Jewish mind is a distinctive thing. It combines in remarkable degree the imaginative and the practical, the ideal and the positive. This combination of qualities enabled it for one thousand five hundred years in Palestine to produce an almost unbroken series of statesmen and soldiers, judges and poets, prophets and seers――thinkers and leaders who have left for all time their impress upon the world. The Jewish mind is tenacious and persists, and now, when all the powerful Empires that over-ran that land have been overthrown and almost forgotten, the Jewish people exists and is more numerous to-day than it ever has been at any period of its history. Who knows, I say, but that if it again finds a spiritual centre of its own, soundly based on an industrious population, untrammelled, self-contained, inspired by the memories of a splendid past, it may again produce golden fruits in the fields of intellect for the enrichment of the whole world. And my other reason is this: If this comes to be, what a helpful effect it would have upon the Jewish proletariat that will still remain scattered in other countries of the world. I see in my mind’s eye those millions in Eastern Europe all through the centuries, crowded, cramped, proscribed, bent with oppression, suffering all the miseries of active minds denied scope, of talent not allowed to speak, of genius that cannot act. I see them enduring, suffering everything, sacrificing everything in order to keep alight the flame of which they knew themselves to be the lamp, to keep alive the idea of which they knew themselves to be the vessel, to preserve the soul of which they knew themselves to be the body; their eyes always set upon one distant point, always believing that somehow, some day, the ancient greatness would be restored; always saying when they met in their families on Passover Night, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ Year after year, generation following generation, century succeeding century, till the time that has elapsed is counted in thousands of years, still they said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ If that cherished vision is at last to be realized, if on the Hills of Zion a Jewish civilization is restored with something of its old intellectual and moral force, then among those left in the other countries of the world, I can see growing a new confidence and a new greatness. There will be a fresh light in those eyes, those bent backs will at last stand erect, there will be a greater dignity in the Jew throughout the world. That is why we meet to-day to thank the British Government――our own Government――that has made all this possible,