For ten years the College remained under the patronage of the Hilfsverein fill in 1914, when the dispute arose over the language question, the institution, with practically all its staff and pupils, passed over to the Zionist Organisation. Since then it has been known as the Hebrew Teachers' College of Jerusalem.
With its entry into the school system of the Zionist Organisation, the College began to develop rapidly and well. In addition to graduates of Palestinian schools, numerous students from abroad, who had already completed College courses, enrolled here as pupils. Soon the Teachers' College became the focus of the spiritual movement of Jerusalem.
During the World War, however, the institution underwent numerous hardships and vicissitudes. The expulsion of a number of pupils from the country by Government decree, the conscription of a further number to be sent for training to the military schools in Constantinople, the banishment from Palestine of the Principal of the College and a number of his staff whose influence on the Jewish population the Government officials considered pernicious -- these were some of the hardships which the College encountered during the War. But with the beginning of the conquest of the land the influence of the College came again to the fore. Our students were among the first to volunteer their help in the conquest of the rest of Palestine by the troops of the allied Powers, and practically all of them served in the Jewish Legion for two years. Only after the lapse of a few years did our institution enter once more on its normal routine; then, revitalised, it began its progressive career in harmony with the new conditions prevailing in the land.
Every year large number of students who had completed their courses in the eight-class urban schools entered the College. In addition, together with the 'halutz' (pioneer) immigration, dozens of well-educated young men who possessed diplomas of overseas secondary schools and colleges, intellectuals, some even who had taught already in Hebrew schools in the Diaspora, enrolled now as students in the Hebrew College.
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