Edith came back to Norfolk each year for a summer holiday in a cottage in West Runton and to see her mother in College Road, Norwich. She was here when the First World War broke out. She immediately returned to Brussels. The deprivations and anxieties of living in the occupied city affected all the nurses. But work continued and Edith visited her trainee nurses at St Gilles Hospital and the various Red Cross hospitals in Brussels. Then, early in 1915, the Germans took over the hospital at St Gilles and staffed it themselves, sending all the Belgian nurses home. This left Edith and her two British compatriots increasingly isolated at the Institute.

Edith still had to run the Institute and supervise the new building works whilst the Principal, Dr Depage, was working in a Belgian Army Military Hospital. From an early stage she was a pivotal active member of the escape network. She was at odds with the Trustees of the Institute, who became increasingly alarmed at the rumours of her escape work.

Despite the increasing interest of the German secret police, Edith would not reduce her undercover activities. Many at the training school did not know fully what she was doing. It was noted by some that she seemed older, increasingly withdrawn and silent - and more determined.