While the Government got worse, the national self-consciousness of the Armenians developed; particularly in the light of the fact that they saw how other subject nations, who made sufficient noise, were given their independence by Europe. They began demanding reform, and a measure of autonomy; requests which it was natural they should make, in light of the fact that they could not help being aware that they were far cleverer and more adaptable than the Turks, and that nevertheless they were treated as an inferior race by them. On the other hand, the Turkish feeling was "This country is ours and we mean to rule it. Equality of treatment such as these Armenians demand is a sheer impossibility; for the reason that the races are not equal. While we have the power, we can keep them under; but to put them on an equality means that in a very few years we shall be under them." Reform is anathema to the Turk, for he knows (even if he cannot put the matter into words) that reform means subjection of the Turk to the _ray[=a]t_. Armenians, and many of the friends of the Armenians, seem unable to understand this side of the question. They cried out in horror at the steps (certainly sufficiently grim ones) which the Turk took to preserve his threatened rule: and not without full cause; for the steps referred to were the Armenian massacres. Still, the fact is that if you, being in the same field with a bull, choose to wave a red handkerchief, it really is no use to explain that any animal of ordinary intelligence ought to have known that you only wanted to blow your own nose; and that anyhow the creature's prejudice against red is very unreasonable! The Turk thinks he has a right to rule; but the only methods he knows are those which did not shock the conscience of anybody in the seventeenth century, but do shock the European conscience now; and hence his verdict was, "The way to get rid of the Armenian question is to get rid of the Armenians." This was how matters stood between the parties in the period 1904-1910 when the writer was resident in Van. At that time the reforming or revolutionary party among the Armenians was known by the generic name of the "_Fedais_;"[121] and was divided internally into two parties, the "_Armeni_" who were more or less moderate in their views and methods, and the "_Tashnak_"[122] society, which advocated open violence.