Neil replied to me, about Justin's disapproval of the Galactic War:

I think it might actually be that Allan Prior lost touch with who was fighting who and why.

Well, that would be my first thought, but I try to forget those sorts of thoughts.

A *galactic* war needn't mean the war with the Andromedans at all, but the warfare that implicitly broke out across the galaxy as a result of the Federation's losses fighting the Andromedans.

It did occur to me that it might not be the Andromedan war per se (and hence galactic, not intergalactic), but I incline to Occam's Razor and therefore assume there was only one war, in the absence of clear reference to another one. I do accept that there was a lot of fighting within our galaxy in the immediate aftermath, as various Federation colonies exploited the situation to make a bid for freedom, and of course there was the attempted revolution on Earth. But I don't think I would classify these as a war, or at least not a galactic one - that would imply (to me) two large, mostly unified forces fighting a campaign against each other across a large part of the galaxy. The scenario that is suggested during third/fourth season is, as you say, chaos.

In the chaotic scenario of multiple rebellions etc, what would the terrible, terrible mistake be? Resisting the Federation?

While I pondered these things, Kat W suggested a simple solution to me. The Andromedans were actually the Australians, who emigrated in search of better weather after the Americans and Russians blew each other up, leaving the England cricket team and the Barmy Army to recolonise Earth (see my earlier post). The Aussie/Andros returned to reclaim the Ashes. Justin's faction thought they were absolutely entitled to take the urn home from Lord's, after winning the series for several centuries on the trot. But MCC, the real power behind the Federation, said they'd never surrendered custody of the Ashes to the Aussies when they lived on the other side of the same planet and they were damned if they were change their policy now that they lived in another galaxy.

Harriere