Lytton Strachey, like the other philosophers, writers, and artists in the Bloomsbury Group, was a conscientious objector.

During the early stages of World War I, Strachey was confronted one day by a woman demanding to know why he was not in uniform, 'fighting for civilization'. "Madam," he drily replied, "I am the civilization for which they are fighting."

[Similar tales are told of classical scholar Heathcote Garrod (who, ironically, was working at the Ministry of Munitions in London at the time of his altercation) and of other members of the Bloomsbury group, to which Gertrude Stein once pointedly referred as "the Young Men's Christian Association -- with Christ left out, of course."]