as not a fundamental tenet of the party. In 1939 Lewis resigned as Plaid Genedleathol Cymru president, citing that Wales was not ready to accept the leadership of a Roman Catholic. Academic and theologian J. E. Daniel, the party's former vice-president between 1931 and 1935, was elected as president of Plaid Cenedlaethol Cymru in 1939, serving until 1943. Criticism Saunders Lewis' perceived "elitist views", and a "condescending attitude towards some aspects of nonconformist, radical and pacifist traditions of Wales" drew criticism from fellow nationalists such as David James (D. J.) Davies, a leftist Plaid Cymru party member and founder. Davies argued in favour of engaging English-speaking Welsh communities, and stressed the territorial integrity of Wales. Davies pointed towards Scandinavian countries as a model to emulate, and was active in the economic implications of Welsh self-government. Notwithstanding his intellect Lewis may have been ill-equipped to lead the party, or even to convince his immediate colleagues of his theories. Historian Geraint H. Jenkins writes: "... Lewis was a cold fish. His reedy voice, bow tie, cerebral style and aristocratic contempt for the proletariat were hardly endearing qualities in a political leader, and his conversion to Catholicism lost him the sympathy of fervent Nonconformists. Heavily influenced by the discourse of right-wing French theorists, this profoundly authoritarian figure developed a grand strategy, such as it was, based on the deindustrialization of Wales. Such a scheme was both impractical and unpopular. It caused grave embarrassment to his socialist colleague D. J. Davies, a progressive economist who, writing with force and passion, showed a much better grasp of the economic realities of the time and greater sensitivity towards the plight of working people." Speaking at the North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History in Gallia County, Ohio, in 2001, Professor John Davies said The other strand of Welsh twentieth-century radicalism, that of Plaid Cymru, also had American associations. While Saunders Lewis looked to France and Rome, that equally significant figure D. J. Davies looked to the Nordic countries and to America, in whose armed forces he served in the First World War, as a protest against the class-bound attitudes of the officers of the British Army. His inspiration came above all from the New Deal, and year in year out the model he offered for the regeneration of depression-ridden Wales was the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was Davies' ideal