I was born and brought up on Cape Cod. To me it is the only place on earth. In olden times, in times gone by, people away from here had the idea that Cape Cod was a narrow strip of land extending off into the ocean, consisting of sand dunes and fish shanties. But in recent years there has been a radical change in the opinion people have had about Cape Cod. Now they are looking at Cape Cod as it really is. The automobile, the chamber of commerce, boards of trade, and other advertising agencies have opened Cape Cod wide, and it has been explored from one end to the other by thousands and thousands. Now some of these people are prophesying the future of Cape Cod, but they are not only prophesying the future of Cape Cod but they are delving down into the past--down into its past records and past history. Recently, almost within the year, they have gone down forty-one years and have come up with the old Monomoy Disaster. Sometimes they come into the post-office and question me about the disaster. I not only have to admit that I had been associated with those men who were lost, but was familiar with the disaster itself, so I have been telling them and all others who were interested by an address. I appreciate the privilege of addressing so many distinguished gatherings. It was the seventeenth day of March 1902, when the news spread--and it spread like wildfire all over--not only over the towns of Chatham and Harwich, the two towns most directly affected by the disaster, but over the surrounding towns and all over Cape Cod, for that matter. Women ran from one house to the other, telling the news--men congregated on corners, in stores and elsewhere, discussing the news. The report was that every surfman on the old Monomoy Lifesaving Station, with the exception of one, had been lost. They had perished off the back side of Monomoy Beach in the tide rips and the seas. In telling the story, I have entitled it, “The Tragedy of Monomoy Beach or the Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Eight miles down from Harwich is the town of Chatham. Everybody knows that Monomoy Beach extends off from Chatham--off into Nantucket Sound in a southerly direction something like ten miles. It is approximately two miles wide, and is composed wholly of beach sand, a growth of beach grass, occasionally a brush swamp, and a few meadows. Its topographic makeup is sand dunes and hollows, hollows and sand dunes, all sizes and shapes, and the sand continues to blow and shift. Today there is a sand dune, tonight a dry gale of wind, tomorrow a piece of level ground. Today there is a piece of level ground, tonight a sand storm, tomorrow a hollow. So it is, year in and year out. The sand continues to blow and shift.