This was the first time he ever signed his name as Meher Baba. 

Chanji wondered about its significance:

The first time Baba signed as M. S. Irani at Karachi [for his passport] in August 1931 [since Baba gave up writing in 1927] brought about his first tour to the West and a turning point in the political history of India, when the famous Gandhi-Irwin pact was formed and Baba took Gandhi with him to the West on the same boat (considered at the time an impossibility due to the tension between the British government and the Gandhi movement).

What this new move and gesture at this moment in France means can be guessed from the critical situation of chaos all over the world, with China and Japan flying at each other's throats around Shanghai. And Franco (in Spain) making a bold bid for [left blank]. The European political situation is in a cauldron. [We will have to] watch the developments.

On 27 August 1937, the painter Helen Dahm arrived from Switzerland with a friend named Alice. They met Baba that evening and again the following day.

On the 27th, Baba remarked to Delia and others, "I want to be out among crowds for some time as I did in Madrid. Be on the lookout for such places and find out the time when crowds gather."

Delia said in a joking manner, "You mingled with the crowds in Madrid and the result was a revolution!"

Regarding Spain, Baba remarked, "I destroy to rebuild. I moved freely there for hours among the crowds and worked to bring about a new regeneration and reconstruction of men and things. This required the destruction and devastation of all existing things there which you are now witnessing." 

Dorothy Norris, who had first met Baba at Harmon in 1931, arrived in Cannes on 28 August and stayed for a few days.

One day in Cannes, Baba disclosed, "For my work I need a healthy, handsome, intelligent and innocent boy. These qualities are essential for the work I wish to do for the world involving the minimizing of lust, especially of homosexuals, which is now prevalent to an alarming extent all over the world. If the boy is not innocent, he would at once misunderstand my intention, which would hinder instead of help my work."