Like others, Barrow was politicised by the First World War. She applied for permission to attend the controversial Women's Peace Congress at The Hague in 1915, but was denied permission to travel. In 1916 she embarked on a long period of humanitarian relief work with the Friends' War Victims Relief Committee. After a brief period in France working at a quarantine station for Serbian refugees on the Frioul islands near Marseilles, she was sent was sent from Newcastle by sea to Murmansk to do Quaker relief work in Buzuluk, western Russia. She remained in Russia during the revolutions of 1917 working on feeding, clothing and medical programmes, as well as establishing occupational workshops, orphanages, nurseries for refugee children, and even a circulating library. The Russian revolution, the collapse of the Russian empire, and the ensuing civil war (1917–1921) had profound consequences for the displacement of population. In her autobiographical recollections, she reflected: