He chose the shorter name for the following reasons: The establishment of the Sanation dictatorship forced the National Democrats to thoroughly revise their previous political tactics.

On 4 December 1926, at a convention in Poznań, Dmowski, who had previously kept to the sidelines of political life, focusing mainly on writing, announced the formation of the Camp of Great Poland (OWP).

Hence, the decision to establish an autonomous Youth Movement within the OWP, headed by Jędrzej Giertych, Tadeusz Bielecki, Jan Mosdorf, and Zdzisław Stahl, among others.

Unwilling to allow this to happen, and finding both attempts to scout Dmowski and administrative harassment ineffective, the regime announced the dissolution of the OWP on March 28, 1933, under the false pretext of threatening a coup d'état.

The 27-year-old Stefan Niebudek, a member of the Main Board of the SN, succumbing to youthful idealism, wanted to see in Benito Mussolini a resurrector of the ancient Roman tradition, a unifier of the Italian nation, and at the same time a defender of the Catholic faith.

His reportage titled In the Country of Black Shirts, written under the influence of a ten-day trip to Italy at Easter 1937, was perhaps the most far-reaching apologia for Mussolini's state in this political formation, with the author paying more attention to Catholic cultural monuments and relics of antiquity than to the infrastructural achievements of the regime.

The mass transition of young people from the disbanded OWP to the SN soon led to tensions between the "old" and the "young," with a dilemma emerging among the latter whether to stick with Dmowski's conservative political methods or to follow the path of "national revolution," also seeking answers to the question of how Catholic Poland was to survive between the socialist Soviet Union and national-socialist Germany.

Added to this was the fundamental question for the Second Republic, how the postulated nation-state should function, since Poles made up less than 70% of the population there, while the rest were minorities, the most numerous of whom were Ukrainians and Jews.

He accepted it with bitterness, accusing the founders of ONR of the mindset and character of eternal students, especially since he did not, after all, abandon his intention to hand over the helm to the younger generation, which soon came to pass, when Tadeusz Bielecki, Jędrzej Giertych, Kazimierz Kowalski began to take power in the SN.

In a letter to Father Józef Prądzyński, Dmowski wrote that he preferred not to announce in the newspapers that he severely condemned the fronda, so as not to put weapons in the hands of opponents.

The leaders of the ONR were imprisoned in the Bereza Kartuska camp after just two months, and on July 10, 1934, the regime declared it banned, and led to the closure of "Sztafeta".

According to Giertych, in his last statements before he was paralyzed by the stroke, Dmowski recommended resistance to the mutation of Pilsudski's ideas, as reflected in Adolf Bocheński's famous book "Between Germany and Russia".

In the end, Tadeusz Bielecki was recommended by a minimal majority, and on June 25, 1939, this choice was approved by the Supreme Council (one hundred and several dozen SN delegates from all over the country).

Despite the disagreements, the National Party, led by Bielecki, worked quite unanimously during the last months of peace for the unity of Poles in the face of the impending war.

This contributed, after the September defeat, to its popularity and credibility, especially among the younger generation, disillusioned with the policies of the Sanation and resentful of the Left, especially after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

It was probably also to keep the leader of the formation, which had been consistently paying attention to the German threat for several decades, unlike the Piłsudskiites, away from political settlements at the decisive moment.

It was emphasized that the Poles are not alone: "With us are our allies, France and Great Britain, who, like us, stood up to fight for the moral order, peace and freedom of Europe."

Germany's defeat was expected, sooner or later: "The victory that this struggle brings us means not only a lasting peace after the breaking of German power, not only the completion of the great work of reuniting the eternal Polish lands with the Motherland, not only the incorporation of Gdańsk into Poland and the resolution of the East Prussian question, but the liberation of Central Europe from German supremacy and the superpower growth of our state."

The party advocated a hierarchical organisation of society and the transformation of the political system by increasing the role of the Polish National elite within the country.