The culmination of this deplorable condition of national demoralisation falls to the epoch of the next civil war, that is to say, of the Ohnin era. It is in this period that we witness a great development of the spy system and of the usage of taking hostages as a security against breach of faith. Even such means, however, proved often inefficient to guard against the unexpected treachery of supposed intimate friends, or a sudden attack from the rear by trusted neighbours. Desertion, though not recommended as a laudable action, was nevertheless not considered a detestable infamy, especially when it was carried out anterior to the pitching of the camps against the enemy, and deserters or betrayers were generally welcomed and loaded with munificent rewards by their new masters. Was it possible that such a ruthless state could continue for long without any counteraction? If any one had once betrayed his first master for the sake of selfish interests, could he claim after that to be a sort of person able to enjoy the implicit confidence of his second master? Examples of repeated breaches of faith abound in the history of the time. It was from the general unreliableness caused by such habitual acts of treachery, that the practice of giving quarter to deserters and facile surrenderers began gradually to diminish. And the result was that the danger of being killed after having surrendered or capitulated became a cause to induce those warriors, who would otherwise have easily given up their master's cause, to remain true to him to the end. This is one of the reasons why, after so long a domination of this miserable demoralisation, we begin frequently to come upon those beautiful episodes which showed the solidarity of clans admirably maintained and the utter loyalty of vassals to their lord, fighting to the death under his banner. The process, however, of ameliorating the morals of the nation should not begin from the relation of master and servant, but slowly start from within families. One could not refrain from feeling the imperative necessity of trustworthy mutual dependence among members connected by ties of blood, amidst the dreary environs in which no hearty confidence could be put in any one with safety. That the _Hsiao-king_, a Chinese moral book treating of the merits of filial piety, was widely read in educated circles of the time, and that several editions of the same book have been published since the middle of the Ashikaga period, show how great a stress was put on the encouragement of domestic duties. With the family, made a compact body, as the starting point, the reorganisation of social and national morals was thus set on foot. The growth of the tendency of liegemen to share the same fate as their lord is to be looked upon as a kind of extension of this family solidarity, as it came not from the consideration of the mere relation between a master and his servants, but rather from that of the