Antwerp was abandoned to the invader; valuables and cherished objects
very skilfully buried in the garden; he had no change of clothing except
what the rucksack held. His only footwear were the boots he came in. He
could not get on any of the slippers in the house, they were all too
small for him, until suddenly Mrs. Britling bethought herself of Herr
Heinrich's pair, still left unpacked upstairs. She produced them, and
they fitted exactly. It seemed only poetical justice, a foretaste of
national compensations, to annex them to Belgium forthwith....

Also it became manifest that Mr. Van der Pant was cut off from all his
family. And suddenly he became briskly critical of the English way of
doing things. His wife and child had preceded him to England, crossing
by Ostend and Folkestone a fortnight ago; her parents had come in
August; both groups had been seized upon by improvised British
organisations and very thoroughly and completely lost. He had written to
the Belgian Embassy and they had referred him to a committee in London,
and the committee had begun its services by discovering a Madame Van der
Pant hitherto unknown to him at Camberwell, and displaying a certain
suspicion and hostility when he said she would not do. There had been
some futile telegrams. "What," asked Mr. Van der Pant, "ought one to
do?"

Mr. Britling temporised by saying he would "make inquiries," and put Mr.
Van der Pant off for two days. Then he decided to go up to London with
him and "make inquiries on the spot." Mr. Van der Pant did not discover
his family, but Mr. Britling discovered the profound truth of a comment
of Herr Heinrich's which he had hitherto considered utterly trivial, but
which had nevertheless stuck in his memory. "The English," Herr Heinrich
had said, "do not understanding indexing. It is the root of all good
organisation."