We had evolved beyond using force: Canopus had shown us this path long ago. (By this I mean the use of large numbers of people, under duress, for tasks they found abhorrent or demeaning. This did not mean that we did not conscript for work that everyone agreed to find interesting—such as the Colonial Service.) It was not possible for us simply to round up the numbers needed for mining, quarrying, building and so on, and then turn them into a prison population to do society’s dirty work.

In the preceding remarks to do with our condition during that time, I have not yet done more than mention the space drive, which was the greater part of our development—indeed, the motor that governed all our technical development.

Our crisis had its own built-in solution from the beginning. It was to increase our space fleets, our space personnel, our programme for the conquest of space. Our situation was not a static one, not self-limited. Though it certainly did have its limits: the war with Canopus was a result of this sudden restless drive outwards. The devastation caused, the vast numbers killed, certainly solved, or postponed, some problems. I am speaking now dispassionately, and without submission to sentimental considerations: it had not been our intention to use this way of reducing our surplus populations—but that was the result; not our intention to ruin whole planets, so that much labour would be needed to repair them—but that was what happened. These were the facts. But the inherent productivity and resources of our Empire were such that all this damage was soon and easily—looking at it from a long-term view—put right. The real lesson of this war was that we were not to be allowed to trespass on Canopean territory. Certain parts of the Galaxy were out of bounds. This meant that the planets available to us, at our then level of technical achievement, were limited: we had already conquered, or at least surveyed, them all.