Roads fit for motor traffic all the year round have been made to Jaffa, Jericho, Hebron and Damascus. An Armenian patriarch was elected in 1921, with the formal approval of the British king, and the position of the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem has been confirmed by a British commission.
Scopus (near the Mount of Olives) in 1914. The foundation stone was laid in 1918 by Dr. C. Weizmann, the president of the Zionist organization, and the university was formally opened by Earl Balfour on April r, 1925. The object of the university was two fold: to carry out research in all departments, and to teach especially in the departments of Jewish and Oriental studies, for which the university should be a world-centre. Departments of chemistry, including physical chemistry, microbiology and Jewish studies, are in existence, and there is an important agricultural research institute at Tel-Aviv in connection with the university. The library already contains over 136,000 volumes. The scientific research is especially directed with a view to the material develop ment of Palestine. (X.) Jerusalem is the product of human effort, not of geographical configuration. Her site is not specially distinguished. Some fa
mous towns seem, from their beginning, to have been designed by nature for their ultimate purpose. Inevitably, by reason of their position, they have suggested to their earliest inhabitants the ideal capital, fortress or port destined to exercise influence and com mand afar. Jerusalem has not attained her importance automat ically. She has been assigned a situation that is typical of her subsequent history, a situation responsive to the hand of man but needing to be discovered, developed and adapted to her function in the world. Jerusalem is the meeting place of east and west; poised on the watershed between the desert and the sea she has united them. "Central, but aloof, defensible but not commanding . . • left alone by the main currents of the world's history, Jeru salem had been but a small highland township, her character com pounded of the rock, the olive and the desert. Sion, the Rock f ort, Olivet and Gethsemane, the Oilpress, the Tower of the Flock and the wilderness of the Shepherds, would still have been names typical of her life, and the things they illustrate have remained the material substance of her history to the present day. But she became the bride of kings and the mother of prophets" (G. A. Smith, op. cit. inf., i., 4). While yet an insignificant hill-fort, known as Urusalim or burg of safety, she served as an outpost for the mighty Pharaoh, with whom Abdi Khiba, her king, cor responded in the cuneiform script, the highest form of polite let ters of the age. For she lay close to the desert and her soldiers could traverse the wilderness of Judea in a day and soon reach the trade routes they were bound by treaty to defend. Jerusalem could control the desert but was and is influenced by it, for the desert reaches almost to her walls. She is between the sea and the western trade route by the maritime plain on one side and the trans-Jordanic caravan road on the other. Hence she was not naturally an entrepot; when she subsequently played her part in commerce her influence was military or political. Her water sup ply has always been poor and her timber scanty. Her industries were local and her main visitors were pilgrims. Jerusalem faces the east and calls the east westward. Her call has been answered in peace and war. In her 33 centuries of history she has suffered at the hands of nature and of man. She has been rocked by earthquakes and sacked by invaders. She has endured over 20 sieges and blockades, about 18 reconstructions and two periods of desolation, after Nebuchadnezzar and Hadrian, when history is silent : six times has she passed from one religion to another. Her valleys have been filled and her hills levelled, her streets and build ings destroyed and her people slain and exiled But Jerusalem has remained. Her spirit is eternal.