[6] Marcello was only 16 when his father died, however, and the boys' mother was obliged to relocate to Turin and rely on discrete support from friends and relatives to sustain the family.

After leaving university in 1904 he sustained his activities as a part-time journalist, contributing to national legal publications such as "Archivio giuridico" and "Giurisprudenza italiana".

[1] Like many young people, Marcello Soleri developed a youthful passion for socialism, which at that time was still considered to be firmly outside the political mainstream by most members of the "haute bourgeoisie" in northern Italy.

However, it was also characteristic of many enthusiastic young socialist intellectuals of the period that around 1905 he turned to a more unambiguous democratic liberalism, which became the political foundation for the rest of his life.

As a liberal-democrat, he drew together, from among his fellow councillors, a coalition of support that included radical democrats, a banker, a prosperous silks entrepreneur and Angelo Segre, leader of the local "Vita Nova" lodge.

As a result of Gentiloni's intervention in the Cuneo region large numbers of catholic voters were persuaded to abstain from voting, and because of their abstentions, after twenty years Galimberti lost his seat.

Solari allegedly rejected Altobelli's assertion that his election success had resulted from interventions in the Cuneo region by "Prime Minister" Giolitti, insisting instead that it reflected his achievements during his short time as mayor of the town.

[1] He made a more striking contribution on 12 June 1914 in defence of small-holders who found themselves threatened, he said, by new taxes on assets which were being proposed by the recently installed first Salandra government.

He clashed seriously in the chamber with "Prime Minister" Salandra himself in January 1915 over government delays in delivering relief for the thousands of surviving victims from that month's deadly Avezzano earthquake in the hills east of Rome.

On 19 August 1914 Marcello Soleri applied to the Ministry of War to be drafted into the Alpini infantry corps in the event of Italy being dragged into the fighting.

Soleri had close political friends and allies on both sides of the "grand debate" and his stance in the ensuing months was also "neutralist", but his position was nevertheless significantly more nuanced and his speeches on the matter less polemical than those of Giolitti.

His principal task in this capacity involved the reduction or reversal of the radical taxation measures on assets and on the "super-profits of war" which had been imposed by the previous government.

He was neither unreserved in his backing of the anti-fascists such as Taddei, Amendola and Alessio, nor supportive of those, such as the "Prime Minister", Riccio and Schanzer, each of whom who favoured attempted collaboration with the new force.

He then initiated disciplinary proceedings against Marshal Emilio De Bono who had defied his obligations to king and country by agreeing to command a fascist militia, and who was one of those who had organised The March.

Despite the much reduced presence of opposition parties in Parliament that had resulted from the manipulation of the rules under which the 1924 General Election had been held, there were still those who believed that Mussolini's post-democratic excesses might somehow be reined in by office.

Soleri argued that opposition members should continue to attend parliamentary sessions in the forlorn hope that the large National Fascist majority might somehow break apart.

On 20 November 1924 he intervened to highlight the contradictions in the position of the Giolitti group which had peeled away from the Liberal party to join the "National List", and now found itself backing a starkly illiberal domestic agenda.

On 12 December 1924 he intervened to draw attention to the inherently unconstitutional character of the government's "Volunteer Militia for National Security" (known to posterity, more simply, as the "Blackshirt" / "Camicie Nere" paramilitaries).

[1][13] After Mussolini's address to parliament on 3 January 1925 and the ensuing purges, the Giolitti group abandoned their attempt to civilise the fascist government and removed themselves from the leader's "National List".

The numbers were insufficient to have any visible impact on the parliamentary arithmetic, but the reunification of the Liberal group in parliament did represent a vindication of the position already reached, and powerfully expressed in public, by Marcello Soleri.

Of particular significance was the speech Soleri delivered to the parliament on 29 April 1926, commemorating Giovanni Amendola, a high-profile anti-fascist who had died at Cannes earlier that month as a consequence of being savagely assaulted in Tuscany by 15 Fascist paramilitaries.

Nevertheless, after 9 November 1926 and the exclusion from the chamber of 123 so-called "Aventine deputies", the liberal group continued as members of the parliament where, now, they provided the only parliamentary opposition till the end of 1928.

[1] He also stayed in touch with old friend and former commander from their time together on the front at Monte Vodice in 1917, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the man who would take over leadership of the government in July 1943.

[1][16] Early in 1943, with the country in a disastrous situation on many fronts, the king attempted to make contact with any members of the "legal" political opposition to the Mussolini government whom he could find.

[1] With the benefit of not very much hindsight, however, it becomes apparent that the king was receiving broadly similar advice from a number of previously senior politicians who had been persuaded into political retirement during the 1920s.

However, D'Acquarone also delivered the news that the men who had led the PLI before the Fascist nightmare were insisting that, with the invasion of Italy now clearly imminent, the installation of a "political" government was necessary.

He thereby drew strong opposition from Liberal Party grandees who were also in town, lobbying for the creation of a replacement government to be jointly headed up by Badoglio and Ivanoe Bonomi.

Meanwhile, between February and June 1944 Soleri found refuge in the homes in the city of a succession of friends and relatives, taking care never to stay in any one house for very long.

Recent price-cost inflation also correlated with currency devaluation and so drove a beneficial reduction in the "real money" value and cost of accumulated public debt.

[9][b] Alongside his political commitments, through years of peace and of war, Marcello Soleri was one of those who did everything he could to sustain the National Alpini [military veterans'] Association.