Next to the cathedral, the most interesting building in Sebenico is the insect-powder factory.  It is a large factory and does a thriving business, the need for its product being Balkan-wide.  If, for upward of five months, you had fought nightly engagements with the cimex lectularius, you would understand how vital is an ample supply of powder.  Believe me or not, as you please, but in many parts of Dalmatia and Albania we were compelled to defend our beds against nocturnal raiding-parties by raising veritable ramparts of insect-powder, very much as in Flanders we threw up earthworks against the assaults of the Hun, while in Monastir the only known way of obtaining sleep is to set the legs of one’s bed in basins filled with kerosene.

Four hours steaming south from Sebenico brought us to Spalato, the largest city of Dalmatia and one of the most picturesquely situated towns in the Levant.  It owes its name to the great palace (palatium) of Diocletian, within the precincts of which a great part of the old town is built and around which have sprung up its more modern suburbs.  Cosily ensconced between the stately marble columns which formed the palace’s facade are fruit, tobacco, barber, shoe, and tailor shops, whose proprietors drive a roaring trade with the sailors from the international armada assembled in the harbor.  A great hall, which had probably originally been one of the vestibules of the palace, was occupied by the Knights of Columbus, the place being in charge of a khaki-clad priest, Father Mullane, of Johnstown, Pa., who twice daily dispensed true American hospitality, in the form of hot doughnuts and mugs of steaming coffee, to the blue-jackets from the American ships.  As there was no coal to be had in the town, he made the doughnuts with the aid of a plumber’s blowpipe.  In the course of our conversation Father Mullane mentioned that he was living with the Serbian bishop—­at least I think he was a bishop-of Spalato.

“I suppose he speaks English or French,” I remarked.

“He does not,” was the answer.

“Then you must have picked up some Serb or Italian,” I hazarded.

“Niver a wurrd of thim vulgar tongues do I know,” said he.

“Then how do you and the bishop get along?”

“Shure,” said Father Mullane, in the rich brogue which is, I imagine, something of an affectation, “an’ what is the use of bein’ educated for the church if we were not able to converse with ease an’ fluency in iligant an’ refined Latin?”

When we were leaving Spalato, Father Mullane presented us with a Bon Voyage package which contained cigarettes, a box of milk chocolate, and a five-pound tin of gum-drops.  The cigarettes we smoked, the chocolate we ate, but the gum-drops we used for tips right across the Balkans.  In lands whose people have not known the taste of sugar for five years we found that a handful of gum-drops would accomplish more than money.  A few men with Father Mullane’s resource, tact, and sense of humor would do more than all the diplomats under the roof of the Hotel Crillon to settle international differences and make the nations understand each other.