APPENDIXI.REPORT OF THE RUSSIAN-JEWISH RELIEFCOMMITTEENOTE.—The following report was issued by the (Russian) Jewish Committee for the Relief of Sufferers from the War, to its members in Russia, in May, 1915, since when conditions in Russia and Poland have steadily grown worse. The authoritativeness of the report is guaranteed by the personnel of the committee, numbering among its membership the foremost Jews of Russia, among whom may be named: Baron A. de Gunzberg, H. Sliosberg, M. Ginsburg and B. Kamenka, chairman of the Executive Committee; M. A. Warschavsky, chairman of the Organizing Committee; and D. Feinberg, L. Bramson and M. Kreinin, Secretaries.Terrible disaster has befallen the Jewish population of the Pale of Settlement and of Poland. Hunger and thirst and disease and death, and moral sufferings beyond the power of human pen to describe are the lot of hundred thousands of Jewish men, women and children whom the war has driven from their homes, whose houses and hearths have been plundered and destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of our unfortunate brethren are staring in hopeless despair into a future that seems to spell nothing but new tears and sufferings....According to the data collected by the General Polish Relief Committee,in Poland, alone there are at least 200 towns and about 9,000 townlets and villages that have suffered from the war, the material damage amounting to the gigantic figure of over a milliard roubles ($500,000,000).Besides the terrible losses sustained by the rural population, the whole industrial production, amountingto nearly 800 million roubles a year, has been ruined. About three million townspeople are destitute, and of these three million at least half, i. e., 1,500,000, are Jews. To this number of unfortunate victims we have to add the population of the provinces of Kovno and Grodno in the northwestern region of the Pale, the provinces of Bessarabia, Podolia and Volynia in the southern and southwestern regions. These provinces, bordering upon Germany and Austria, have a Jewish population of at least 500,000 people.Thus the total number of Jews that have, in one way or another, suffered immediately from the conditions of warfare equals over two million people, representing one-third, of the total Jewish population of Russia.Besides, there are hundred thousands of destitute Jews in Galicia (within Russian occupation) looking forward to relief from this country.To the utter ruin of their material welfare there are added the unspeakable sufferings that the population of the war area has to endure. In the most favorable of cases the inhabitants of the border places escape from the zone of fire, taking refuge in the inner parts of the country; while a large proportion of those unfortunate Jewish families have remained in the ruined places, facing the phantoms of starvation and disease that gather a rich harvest among them.Such is the devotion and love of the Jews to their native places, to their own corner, that they prefer to stay in the devastated towns and townlets and villages, if only permitted to do so. And those who have fled from their homes take the first opportunity of returning, heedless of the terrible disasters lying in store for them. A vivid example, typical of many other instances, is given by the Jews in the villages of Vissiltsy, DistrictBusak, province Kielce. Our delegate found the place razed by hostile shells. The population—mostly Jews—for over three months had been huddling together in cellars, where they had taken refuge. They were not to leave their shelter by day; no food was to be cooked, no fire lighted at night—such were the stringent orders from military quarters. A humane military chief permitted them to crawl out of their dingy holes by night and feed out of the soldiers’ cauldron. But soon another chief took his place and the unfortunate Jews were left to starve in their cellars.Those that succumbed were buried in holes that the survivors dug for them in the very same cellars....Infinitely tragic too is the fate of those Jews who, by rigorous orders of the military authorities at a notice of from three to twenty-four hours are expelled from whole provinces of Poland, their presence near the area of hostilities being considered “a danger to the safety of the Russian arms.” Leaving their homes and belongings, the fruit of years of hard toil, an open prey, the unfortunate exiles by the thousands wend their weary way to towns and villages, thirty or more miles distant, that have not yet come within the decrees of the military authorities. Old men, sick women, clasping little children in their arms, carrying bundles with some scanty belongings that they had snatched up in haste, fill the silent roads with the sound of their moans and sobs. Here an old man breaks down, breathing his last sigh in the middle of the road. There a woman kneels by the roadside staring in despair too deep for tears, at the child that lies dead in her arms.... Many are those who succumb on their way; indescribable are the sufferings of those who survive. Scarcely have they found shelter in a hospitable town or townlet when—alas!too frequently—the prohibition of the authorities is a few days later extended also to these places, and again the Jewish population must start upon its weary pilgrimage....The total number of refugees from the war zone and of exiles can scarcely be calculated with precision because large numbers have made their way to numerous small townlets throughout the Pale, thus frustrating systematic registration, while, at the same time, the progress of the war tends to swell the host of refugees daily.Some idea of their number is given by the following approximate figures:Warsaw75,000 peopleRadom2,000 peopleVilna12,000 peopleGussiatin1,000 peopleKielce3,000 peopleShakvi (Suvalki)[56]1,500 peopleKonsk4,000 peopleLomzha5,000 peopleMinsk2,000 peopleKhmelnikPrassnysh1,500 people(Prov. Kielce)1,500 peopleAnd yet these figures only show the number of refugees who have applied for assistance; hundreds of thousands of others are meanwhile living upon their savings and do not come under the registration. But they also will be at the end of their scant resources one of these days and will join the ranks of the destitute.... Thus, for the above-named places and for many other dozens of towns and townlets the number of refugees within their walls may be doubled without fear of exaggeration.While numerous towns and townlets have, in generous hospitality, opened their gates to the unfortunate refugees and exiles from the war area, the native Jewish population of these places is itself suffering a severe economic crisis, an acute attack of unemployment, which as a matterof fact, is further intensified by the influx of refugees eager to offer their services, for the smallest remuneration. Thus poverty and misery are growing in these places too, the burden of relief becoming too heavy for the local community to bear.We have already stated that the industrial life of Poland and in a large part of the Pale has been laid waste as a consequence of the war. Hundreds of factories have been destroyed, hundreds others have had to stop work for want of capital, raw material, fuel and—first and foremost—for want of a market for their articles of production. Many thousands of workmen who were formerly employed by these factories have remained without bread.Whole branches of trade have been shattered, burying the welfare of the artisans under their ruins. The tailors, weavers, bootmakers, builders, trades, normally sustaining a large percentage of Jews in Poland and in the Pale, are dead; the artisans are left to starve, unless something can be done to save them.Commercial life also has been laid waste. The merchants—great and small—are ruined; hundreds of merchant’s clerks are thrown out of work and have to apply to public charity.There is yet another class of sufferers whose wants and needs have to be attended to. About 300,000 Jews are fighting in the ranks of the Russian army. Their mothers, wives and children are receiving but scanty support (about 2 roubles a head) from the Government. About half of them, however, are not getting any Government aid at all, their marriages, although legally solemnized, not having been entered in the official marriage registers. (It is a well known fact that the uneducated Jews of Poland and in the Pale frequently omit to havetheir marriages registered, failing to realize the full importance of this formality.) Rent and food having become considerably dearer with the outbreak of the war, the soldiers’ families often suffer acute want, which necessitates immediate help lest these people become charges on their community. Many of the soldiers will never return from the battlefields; others will come back as cripples, unfit to support themselves or their families. They will all want support of some kind or another....It is a boundless sea of troubles that has to be coped with and the full weight of the task is falling upon Jewish shoulders. The gulf dividing the bulk of Russian society from Jewish life and needs and sorrows has not been bridged over by the horrors of war. Though now and again a voice of sympathy is heard from Russian quarters, here and there a Russian hand is extended to feed a starving Jewish child, both moral and material assistance offered by non-Jews to our stricken people is but infinitesimal as compared with the magnitude of the distress.Nor do we now wish to dwell specifically on Polish-Jewish relations, it being too well known to what extent they have become pointed during the recent months, bearing in their train infinite, yea, unbearable sufferings for our Jewish brethren.In order to unite the efforts of Jewish society towards the relief of the Jewish sufferers from the war, at the very outbreak of the European conflagration there was formed at Petrograd a General Jewish Relief Committee, with the sanction of the Russian authorities, to act as a center for the collection and distribution of funds to the destitute and needy Jews. At the very beginning of its activity the General Committee issued an appeal to the Jewish public calling it to its duty to theunfortunate sufferers, just as the Jewish soldiers fighting and distinguishing themselves in the ranks of the Russian army are doing their duty by their mother country.Jewish society at large has shown its usual responsiveness and material support has been forthcoming in as large a measure as individual means and circumstances would permit.Committees, similar to the General Committee, working on the same lines and in close unity with it have since been organized in prominent centers of the stricken area and outside of it—e. g., in Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and in addition the existing Jewish organizations, such as the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonization Association, the Society for the Promotion of Education in Russia, the Jewish Health Society, the Society for the Promotion of Trade and Industry among Russian Jews, etc., etc., are taking active part in the relief work. Representatives of the various committees and societies working in the war zone and outside it meet periodically in order to discuss new measures and schemes for the alleviation of the terrible distress.The conditions and extent of distress in towns, townlets and villages of Poland and of the Pale are being ascertained through delegates of the General Relief Committee working actively and energetically towards the organization of various forms of relief in the several districts. In a number of places the local Jewish community has readily joined in the relief work, doing its utmost to meet the demand for food, shelter, clothing; the local philanthropic and communal Jewish institutions thus becoming valuable agencies of the General Relief Committee. On the whole, however—particularly as far as Poland is concerned:—the organization of assistance to the war sufferers is meeting with endless difficulties,due largely to the fact that the suffering population is in such a state of frantic terror, that many Jews do not even dream of applying to anyone for assistance. In many instances the first terror has given way to complete apathy.Often our representatives have to seek these people out in their hiding places, to rouse them from their lethargy, to exercise moral pressure on the more prominent members of the community, before anything can be done for the sufferers. This attitude of the people becomes intelligible when we consider the conditions that they live in under ordinary circumstances—their poverty, their lack of education, the contempt they are accustomed to meet with on the part of the non-Jewish population.Similar conditions prevail in the Galician Provinces within Russian occupation:“I found them huddling together in damp and dark cellars, half-naked, sick and starving”—these are the words of one of our representatives who visited some of the places that had witnessed all the horrors of the war.“They showed complete apathy, appeared to be in a trance of terror. Only a madman—he had become insane because of superhuman suffering—followed me into the street, shrieking for bread. I handed him a coin, but he threw it down and clamored for bread....”The ever changing conditions of war, that open up new regions for relief work today, and close other districts tomorrow, that throw ever new crowds of sufferers upon public charity—these, to a large extent baffle all our efforts towards relief, destroying today what was organized yesterday. Add to this the peculiar circumstances of Jewish life in Russia, the unfavorable attitude of the authorities towards the Jewish populationin the war area—and the difficulties that the organization of relief has to cope with will stand out in their full significance.Owing to these and other conditions the General Relief Committee up till now has had to concentrate largely on extending “first aid,” this term being here used to comprise feeding and sheltering of the sufferers. Distribution of food (at low rates or free of charge), of fuel, clothes, foot-wear; organization of feeding centres, amelioration of sheltering and housing conditions, of sanitation and hygiene among the war sufferers—are the chief forms relief has taken so far.At the present moment there are being equipped by the General Relief Committee two so-called “sanitary and feeding expeditions” whose object it will be to offer medical assistance and provide free food to the sufferers in the war area of Poland, irrespective of religious denomination. (The money for this purpose has been received from London with the express condition that no distinction be made between Jews and non-Jews).Moreover, insofar as this has been possible, efforts have been made to secure work for the refugees and for those who have lost their employment as a result of the war. Thus in Warsaw there has been opened a workshop where refugees are employed in manufacturing various articles of underclothing for distribution among the war sufferers. In Vilna there has been established a workshop for bootmakers who are filling Government orders for army boots. Similar workshops have been organized at Dvinsk, Fastov, etc. Further, there has been opened at Warsaw a labor-bureau which is obtaining work for a considerable number of artisans.A large number of small merchants and artisans being in urgent need of credit to enable them to re-establish andoperate their business and to prevent them from lapsing into utter destitution, credit is being afforded them through the medium of the Jewish cooperative credit societies that are working throughout the Pale of Settlement and Poland. So far, by way of experiment, about 23,000 roubles have been invested in this operation; however, should this useful form of assistance be enlarged, considerable means will be required for the purpose.At the present moment the General Relief Committee, working in close cooperation with the committees in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa, is extending relief to over 300 centres of population situated in the following provinces:Poland—Approximate Numberof Populated CentersProvince Warsaw (including city ofWarsaw where a large number ofrefugees are concentrated)46Province Vilna18Province Kovno40Province Suvalki20Province Liublin (only part of itbeing accessible to relief work)25Province Kielce (only part of itbeing accessible to relief work)12Province Radom15Province Grodno (now included insphere of activity of MoscowCommittee)5Province Lomzha (now included insphere of activity of MoscowCommittee)10Province Plotsk (now included insphere of activity of MoscowCommittee)8Province Kholm (now within activityof Kiev and Odessa Committee)10Southwestern Province—Province: Podolia, Bessarabia andVolynia (Border districts)10Galicia—Petrograd Committee (cooperatingwith Kiev and Odessa Committee)75Outside War Area10—Total304
I.
NOTE.—The following report was issued by the (Russian) Jewish Committee for the Relief of Sufferers from the War, to its members in Russia, in May, 1915, since when conditions in Russia and Poland have steadily grown worse. The authoritativeness of the report is guaranteed by the personnel of the committee, numbering among its membership the foremost Jews of Russia, among whom may be named: Baron A. de Gunzberg, H. Sliosberg, M. Ginsburg and B. Kamenka, chairman of the Executive Committee; M. A. Warschavsky, chairman of the Organizing Committee; and D. Feinberg, L. Bramson and M. Kreinin, Secretaries.
Terrible disaster has befallen the Jewish population of the Pale of Settlement and of Poland. Hunger and thirst and disease and death, and moral sufferings beyond the power of human pen to describe are the lot of hundred thousands of Jewish men, women and children whom the war has driven from their homes, whose houses and hearths have been plundered and destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of our unfortunate brethren are staring in hopeless despair into a future that seems to spell nothing but new tears and sufferings....
According to the data collected by the General Polish Relief Committee,in Poland, alone there are at least 200 towns and about 9,000 townlets and villages that have suffered from the war, the material damage amounting to the gigantic figure of over a milliard roubles ($500,000,000).Besides the terrible losses sustained by the rural population, the whole industrial production, amountingto nearly 800 million roubles a year, has been ruined. About three million townspeople are destitute, and of these three million at least half, i. e., 1,500,000, are Jews. To this number of unfortunate victims we have to add the population of the provinces of Kovno and Grodno in the northwestern region of the Pale, the provinces of Bessarabia, Podolia and Volynia in the southern and southwestern regions. These provinces, bordering upon Germany and Austria, have a Jewish population of at least 500,000 people.Thus the total number of Jews that have, in one way or another, suffered immediately from the conditions of warfare equals over two million people, representing one-third, of the total Jewish population of Russia.
Besides, there are hundred thousands of destitute Jews in Galicia (within Russian occupation) looking forward to relief from this country.
To the utter ruin of their material welfare there are added the unspeakable sufferings that the population of the war area has to endure. In the most favorable of cases the inhabitants of the border places escape from the zone of fire, taking refuge in the inner parts of the country; while a large proportion of those unfortunate Jewish families have remained in the ruined places, facing the phantoms of starvation and disease that gather a rich harvest among them.
Such is the devotion and love of the Jews to their native places, to their own corner, that they prefer to stay in the devastated towns and townlets and villages, if only permitted to do so. And those who have fled from their homes take the first opportunity of returning, heedless of the terrible disasters lying in store for them. A vivid example, typical of many other instances, is given by the Jews in the villages of Vissiltsy, DistrictBusak, province Kielce. Our delegate found the place razed by hostile shells. The population—mostly Jews—for over three months had been huddling together in cellars, where they had taken refuge. They were not to leave their shelter by day; no food was to be cooked, no fire lighted at night—such were the stringent orders from military quarters. A humane military chief permitted them to crawl out of their dingy holes by night and feed out of the soldiers’ cauldron. But soon another chief took his place and the unfortunate Jews were left to starve in their cellars.Those that succumbed were buried in holes that the survivors dug for them in the very same cellars....
Infinitely tragic too is the fate of those Jews who, by rigorous orders of the military authorities at a notice of from three to twenty-four hours are expelled from whole provinces of Poland, their presence near the area of hostilities being considered “a danger to the safety of the Russian arms.” Leaving their homes and belongings, the fruit of years of hard toil, an open prey, the unfortunate exiles by the thousands wend their weary way to towns and villages, thirty or more miles distant, that have not yet come within the decrees of the military authorities. Old men, sick women, clasping little children in their arms, carrying bundles with some scanty belongings that they had snatched up in haste, fill the silent roads with the sound of their moans and sobs. Here an old man breaks down, breathing his last sigh in the middle of the road. There a woman kneels by the roadside staring in despair too deep for tears, at the child that lies dead in her arms.... Many are those who succumb on their way; indescribable are the sufferings of those who survive. Scarcely have they found shelter in a hospitable town or townlet when—alas!too frequently—the prohibition of the authorities is a few days later extended also to these places, and again the Jewish population must start upon its weary pilgrimage....
The total number of refugees from the war zone and of exiles can scarcely be calculated with precision because large numbers have made their way to numerous small townlets throughout the Pale, thus frustrating systematic registration, while, at the same time, the progress of the war tends to swell the host of refugees daily.
Some idea of their number is given by the following approximate figures:
And yet these figures only show the number of refugees who have applied for assistance; hundreds of thousands of others are meanwhile living upon their savings and do not come under the registration. But they also will be at the end of their scant resources one of these days and will join the ranks of the destitute.... Thus, for the above-named places and for many other dozens of towns and townlets the number of refugees within their walls may be doubled without fear of exaggeration.
While numerous towns and townlets have, in generous hospitality, opened their gates to the unfortunate refugees and exiles from the war area, the native Jewish population of these places is itself suffering a severe economic crisis, an acute attack of unemployment, which as a matterof fact, is further intensified by the influx of refugees eager to offer their services, for the smallest remuneration. Thus poverty and misery are growing in these places too, the burden of relief becoming too heavy for the local community to bear.
We have already stated that the industrial life of Poland and in a large part of the Pale has been laid waste as a consequence of the war. Hundreds of factories have been destroyed, hundreds others have had to stop work for want of capital, raw material, fuel and—first and foremost—for want of a market for their articles of production. Many thousands of workmen who were formerly employed by these factories have remained without bread.
Whole branches of trade have been shattered, burying the welfare of the artisans under their ruins. The tailors, weavers, bootmakers, builders, trades, normally sustaining a large percentage of Jews in Poland and in the Pale, are dead; the artisans are left to starve, unless something can be done to save them.
Commercial life also has been laid waste. The merchants—great and small—are ruined; hundreds of merchant’s clerks are thrown out of work and have to apply to public charity.
There is yet another class of sufferers whose wants and needs have to be attended to. About 300,000 Jews are fighting in the ranks of the Russian army. Their mothers, wives and children are receiving but scanty support (about 2 roubles a head) from the Government. About half of them, however, are not getting any Government aid at all, their marriages, although legally solemnized, not having been entered in the official marriage registers. (It is a well known fact that the uneducated Jews of Poland and in the Pale frequently omit to havetheir marriages registered, failing to realize the full importance of this formality.) Rent and food having become considerably dearer with the outbreak of the war, the soldiers’ families often suffer acute want, which necessitates immediate help lest these people become charges on their community. Many of the soldiers will never return from the battlefields; others will come back as cripples, unfit to support themselves or their families. They will all want support of some kind or another....
It is a boundless sea of troubles that has to be coped with and the full weight of the task is falling upon Jewish shoulders. The gulf dividing the bulk of Russian society from Jewish life and needs and sorrows has not been bridged over by the horrors of war. Though now and again a voice of sympathy is heard from Russian quarters, here and there a Russian hand is extended to feed a starving Jewish child, both moral and material assistance offered by non-Jews to our stricken people is but infinitesimal as compared with the magnitude of the distress.
Nor do we now wish to dwell specifically on Polish-Jewish relations, it being too well known to what extent they have become pointed during the recent months, bearing in their train infinite, yea, unbearable sufferings for our Jewish brethren.
In order to unite the efforts of Jewish society towards the relief of the Jewish sufferers from the war, at the very outbreak of the European conflagration there was formed at Petrograd a General Jewish Relief Committee, with the sanction of the Russian authorities, to act as a center for the collection and distribution of funds to the destitute and needy Jews. At the very beginning of its activity the General Committee issued an appeal to the Jewish public calling it to its duty to theunfortunate sufferers, just as the Jewish soldiers fighting and distinguishing themselves in the ranks of the Russian army are doing their duty by their mother country.
Jewish society at large has shown its usual responsiveness and material support has been forthcoming in as large a measure as individual means and circumstances would permit.
Committees, similar to the General Committee, working on the same lines and in close unity with it have since been organized in prominent centers of the stricken area and outside of it—e. g., in Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and in addition the existing Jewish organizations, such as the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonization Association, the Society for the Promotion of Education in Russia, the Jewish Health Society, the Society for the Promotion of Trade and Industry among Russian Jews, etc., etc., are taking active part in the relief work. Representatives of the various committees and societies working in the war zone and outside it meet periodically in order to discuss new measures and schemes for the alleviation of the terrible distress.
The conditions and extent of distress in towns, townlets and villages of Poland and of the Pale are being ascertained through delegates of the General Relief Committee working actively and energetically towards the organization of various forms of relief in the several districts. In a number of places the local Jewish community has readily joined in the relief work, doing its utmost to meet the demand for food, shelter, clothing; the local philanthropic and communal Jewish institutions thus becoming valuable agencies of the General Relief Committee. On the whole, however—particularly as far as Poland is concerned:—the organization of assistance to the war sufferers is meeting with endless difficulties,due largely to the fact that the suffering population is in such a state of frantic terror, that many Jews do not even dream of applying to anyone for assistance. In many instances the first terror has given way to complete apathy.
Often our representatives have to seek these people out in their hiding places, to rouse them from their lethargy, to exercise moral pressure on the more prominent members of the community, before anything can be done for the sufferers. This attitude of the people becomes intelligible when we consider the conditions that they live in under ordinary circumstances—their poverty, their lack of education, the contempt they are accustomed to meet with on the part of the non-Jewish population.
Similar conditions prevail in the Galician Provinces within Russian occupation:
“I found them huddling together in damp and dark cellars, half-naked, sick and starving”—these are the words of one of our representatives who visited some of the places that had witnessed all the horrors of the war.“They showed complete apathy, appeared to be in a trance of terror. Only a madman—he had become insane because of superhuman suffering—followed me into the street, shrieking for bread. I handed him a coin, but he threw it down and clamored for bread....”
The ever changing conditions of war, that open up new regions for relief work today, and close other districts tomorrow, that throw ever new crowds of sufferers upon public charity—these, to a large extent baffle all our efforts towards relief, destroying today what was organized yesterday. Add to this the peculiar circumstances of Jewish life in Russia, the unfavorable attitude of the authorities towards the Jewish populationin the war area—and the difficulties that the organization of relief has to cope with will stand out in their full significance.
Owing to these and other conditions the General Relief Committee up till now has had to concentrate largely on extending “first aid,” this term being here used to comprise feeding and sheltering of the sufferers. Distribution of food (at low rates or free of charge), of fuel, clothes, foot-wear; organization of feeding centres, amelioration of sheltering and housing conditions, of sanitation and hygiene among the war sufferers—are the chief forms relief has taken so far.
At the present moment there are being equipped by the General Relief Committee two so-called “sanitary and feeding expeditions” whose object it will be to offer medical assistance and provide free food to the sufferers in the war area of Poland, irrespective of religious denomination. (The money for this purpose has been received from London with the express condition that no distinction be made between Jews and non-Jews).
Moreover, insofar as this has been possible, efforts have been made to secure work for the refugees and for those who have lost their employment as a result of the war. Thus in Warsaw there has been opened a workshop where refugees are employed in manufacturing various articles of underclothing for distribution among the war sufferers. In Vilna there has been established a workshop for bootmakers who are filling Government orders for army boots. Similar workshops have been organized at Dvinsk, Fastov, etc. Further, there has been opened at Warsaw a labor-bureau which is obtaining work for a considerable number of artisans.
A large number of small merchants and artisans being in urgent need of credit to enable them to re-establish andoperate their business and to prevent them from lapsing into utter destitution, credit is being afforded them through the medium of the Jewish cooperative credit societies that are working throughout the Pale of Settlement and Poland. So far, by way of experiment, about 23,000 roubles have been invested in this operation; however, should this useful form of assistance be enlarged, considerable means will be required for the purpose.
At the present moment the General Relief Committee, working in close cooperation with the committees in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa, is extending relief to over 300 centres of population situated in the following provinces: