The National Woman's Party led dozens of women to picket the White House in Washington, D.C. as Silent Sentinels beginning in January 1917. A bi-partisan organization, it directed its attacks at the office of the President of the United States, in this case, Woodrow Wilson. Burns also opposed World War I, seeing it as a war led by powerful men that resulted in young men being drafted and giving their lives with little free will. Throughout her career with the National Woman's Party, Burns was known to have a bitter sense of injustice and become angry because of the actions of the President or apathetic Americans.