Of course, to _make_ such damaging accusations is not to _prove_ them,--whether they be made in a newspaper or in a legal instrument: the noblest and best men and women the world has ever seen, or ever will see, all are liable to traduction and attack. But the members of the Syndicate, after taking cognizance of these accusations, after declaring under oath that they had been damaged by the making of them in the amount of $100,000, and after the braggart spokesman for the group had asserted in print that “we mean to make Mr. Fiske prove his allegations or publicly acknowledge his mistake,” dallied and delayed in the case for two and one-half years (during all of which time Mr. Fiske, as he personally and repeatedly assured me, was not only willing but eager to go to trial on the facts),--and then, April 18, 1900, _discontinued their action_. Commenting on this proceeding, Fiske said, in “The Mirror”: “No pretence of legal unreadiness and no motion for delay of this case have ever proceeded from the defence.... ‘The Mirror’ has been not only ready but eager at all times since the joining of issue in this case to thoroughly thresh the matter out in open court.... The case never has been pushed in court, and _it is evident that the plaintiffs never had any intention to try it_.” Judicious readers will, I believe, agree that the course of the members of the Syndicate amounts, practically, to a confession of the truth of Fiske’s charges; and surely, in the circumstances, they can neither wonder nor complain because those charges have been generally believed.--As to the power exerted by A. L. Erlanger over Belasco and the quality of the Theatrical Syndicate as a monopoly, I consider the arraignment made by Samuel Untermyer, before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, to be perhaps the best and most entirely just that I have ever read: