But, in addition to this, Frenchmen, the most thrifty people in the world, are disinclined to use their savings in the development of their own country. In literature, in science, in art, they display great faculties of initiative. In the matter of investment they prefer to rely upon others. Even the underground railways of their metropolis were started by a foreigner: the French investors only coming in to buy the debentures of companies which they might just as well have started themselves. They complained that the Germans were making vast profits out of "their own" iron mines of Lorraine which had been taken from France in an undeveloped state in 1871; yet they failed to exploit the still richer deposits in Briey, of which the Germans were so envious that the desire to possess them was one of the minor causes of the war. Similar instances of neglected opportunities could be pointed out in many districts. This indifference of the thrifty French investors to the possibility of enriching their own country by the use at home of the money capital obtained from their own savings, and the profits derived from visitors, astonished lookers-on. Clemenceau denounced the folly of financial wars of conquest in semi-civilised countries when France needed her own resources for the improvement of her own soil and what underlay it, as well as to make adequate preparation for war. But the loans to foreign nations and foreign banks were economically as prejudicial to her real interests as the injurious colonial policy. That was proved only too clearly, even in the field of military preparation when, in August and September, 1914, tens of thousands of men, unsupplied with clothing and equipment, were to be seen in and around Paris. England had to provide them with what they required.