In 1938, he was one of the initiators of the petition "Věrni zůstaneme!" eventually signed by more than a million people. Just after Munich Agreement he became a co-author of a manifest "To All the Civilised World" (Celému civilizovanému světu). He was one of the seven funeral orators above the coffin of Karel Čapek. He exchanged more conservative Jaroslav Durych as a president of the Literary department of Art Forum and from his post helped many people afflicted with war, especially during Heydrich′s protectorship risking his life. In 1939, he wrote to a resistance magazine under the name of Jan Víra. In 1941, he withdrew from public life partly due to intensive intervention of Nazi censorship in the Czech press and partly due to his illness. Josef Hora died shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in Prague at the age of 53 and was buried in Slavín.