The narrator recognizes that
war is cruel, unjust, and inescapable.
The narrator asserts that walking away
from war would only mean war would follow you home and attack your home.
Earnest Hemingway served with the Red Cross during World War I and was injured
by Austrian mortar fire while carrying out his duties. After World War I, he
served as a war correspondent for other conflicts that broke out in Europe. His
grandson said of his reporting on war that Hemingway "told the public
about every facet of the war--especially, and most important, its effects on
the common man, woman, and child." Hemingway's book, Farewell to Arms, was
written in that way also, not glorifying war but dealing with its realities.
That's the sort of tone revealed by the narrator in the passage quoted here
also.
