At the Women's International Conference at The Hague in 1915, Chown "contributed to the merging of pacifist and suffragette ideas in a program denouncing militarism, autocracy, secret treaties, and imperialism while calling for a new international order based on compulsory arbitrarion, universal disarmament, freedom of the seas, and a league of democratic nations." In the same year, she was a co-founder with Laura Hughes and Elsie Charlton of the Canadian Women's Peace Party. Her outspoken views were to bring her notoriety. She was hostile to the church, and as a pacifist was critical of the attitude of her cousin Samuel Dwight Chown, a Methodist minister and army chaplain during the war.