 However, the party's members believed its founding was an achievement in itself; "merely by existing, the party was a declaration of the distinctiveness of Wales," wrote Davies.During the inter-war years, "Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru" was most successful as a social and educational pressure group rather than as a political party.For Saunders Lewis, party president 1926 – 1939, "the chief aim of the party [is] to 'take away from the Welsh their sense of inferiority... to remove from our beloved country the mark and shame of conquest.'"