It is fitting that Great Britain, aided by her great Allies, in the midst of tribulation and sorrow, should stand sponsor to this University. Great Britain has understood that it is just because these are times of stress, just because men tend to become lost in the events of the day, that there is a need to overlay these details by this bold appeal to the world’s imagination. Here what seemed but a dream a few years ago is now becoming a reality. “What is the significance of a _Hebrew_ University――what are going to be its functions, whence will it draw its students, and what languages will it speak? It seems at first sight paradoxical that in a land with so sparse a population, in a land where everything still remains to be done, in a land crying out for such simple things as ploughs, roads, and harbours, we should begin by creating a centre of spiritual and intellectual development. But it is no paradox for those who know the soul of the Jew. It is true that great social and political problems still face us and will demand their solution from us. We Jews know that when the mind is given fullest play, when we have a centre for the development of Jewish consciousness, then coincidently we shall attain the fulfilment of our material needs. In the darkest ages of our existence we found protection and shelter within the walls of our schools and colleges, and in devoted study of Jewish science the tormented Jew found relief and consolation. Amid all the sordid squalor of the _Ghetto_ there stood schools of learning where numbers of young Jews sat at the feet of our _Rabbis_ and teachers. Those schools and colleges served as large reservoirs where there was stored up during the long ages of persecution an intellectual and spiritual energy which on the one hand helped to maintain our national existence, and on the other hand blossomed forth for the benefit of mankind when once the walls of the _Ghetto_ fell. The sages of Babylon and _Jerusalem_, Maimonides and the _Gaon_ of Wilna, the lens polisher of Amsterdam and Karl Marx, Heinrich Heine and Paul Ehrlich are some of the links in the long, unbroken chain of intellectual development.