The walls of the hall still bore the scars of artillery shelling, hastily patched over with plaster and fresh coats of paint, but the cracks ran deeper than the walls.
They ran through the soul of a nation stretched to breaking, and through the last threadbare illusions of American control in the Pacific.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt sat beneath a lacquered American eagle, his wheelchair carefully positioned behind a long mahogany table.
On the other side sat three men, representatives of the Civic Front, the nominal political face of the insurgency that had bled American forces dry from Luzon to Sulu.
Roosevelt's voice was measured, statesmanlike. But his eyes were tired.
"Gentlemen," he began, adjusting the papers in front of him. "The American people want peace. They want their sons home. And I imagine yours do as well."
The man in the center, Senator Teodoro Marasigan, was lean, neatly dressed, and calm in demeanor.
