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GREETING* It is a pleasure and an honor to take part in these ceremonies inaugurating Dr. T. R. McConnell as the 8th Chancellor of the University of Buffalo. This University, in which I had the good fortune to study and to serve as an officer, though by no means the largest, the wealthiest, or the oldest of the hundreds of institutions of higher education in this country, is unquestionably one of the most distinguished. If it had larger resources it could, of course, render a fuller service to the Niagara frontier which is such an important economic and social unit in our national life. But the resources which thousands of citizens of this community have provided during the past quarter century have been put to the most effective use in build- ing a serviceable plant and in assembling a faculty of able men and women. Striking as these features of the University are, there is a more arresting characteristic responsible for the renown this institution enjoys throughout the academic world. It is its spirit. Though things of the spirit are impossible to grasp and hard to assess, they are nevertheless very real. Today they count heavily in a world in which there is abroad a force attempting *By Earl James McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., at the Inauguration of Dr. Thomas Raymond McConnell as Chancellor of the University of Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, Saturday, January 6, 1951.