a career in the Serbian Orthodox Church. He was greatly influenced by Leo Tolstoy's doctrine of Christian non-violence, but later rejected this doctrine during World War I. Following his father's advice, he went on to study law and graduated from the Law School of the University of Belgrade. With the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, Ljotić joined the Serbian Army. In the autumn of 1913, he accepted a state scholarship to study in Paris. He stayed in the city for nearly a year, and while studying at the Institute of Agriculture he was exposed to the right-wing, proto-fascist ideas of writer Charles Maurras. Maurras was a French counter-revolutionary who founded the far-right political movement known as Action Française and whose writings went on to influence European fascists and the ideologues of the Vichy Regime during World War II. Ljotić described Maurras as a "rare shining spirit" and cited him as one of his greatest intellectual influences. Ljotić returned from Paris on 1 September 1914, and rejoined the Serbian Army. He attained the rank of corporal by year's end and was wounded during the Ovče Pole Offensive. During the winter of 1915–16, he participated in the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania. Ljotić remained on active service after the war ended, with a unit guarding the border between the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Italy near the town of Bakar. During this time, he also worked for the intelligence service of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1919, he helped break a railway strike meant to disrupt the flow of munitions intended for anti-Communist forces fighting against Béla Kun in Hungary. In 1920, he ordered troops under his command to arrest striking railway workers, convinced that all were complicit in a Communist conspiracy. Ljotić was demobilized on 17 June 1920. He subsequently married Ivka Mavrinac, a Roman Catholic Croat from the village of Krasica on the Croatian Littoral. The couple had two sons, Vladimir and Nikola, and a daughter, Ljubica. Ljotić and his wife relocated to Belgrade not long after their marriage. Ljotić passed his bar examination on 22 September 1921, and began practicing law. He later became vice-president of the diocesan council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the town of Požarevac, and represented the Požarevac diocese in the church's patriarchal council. Interwar political career People's Radical Party and Ministry of Justice