Question

Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

I would say that Hemingway's indirect characterization of the narrator reveals that the narrator recognizes that war is cruel, unjust, and inescapable. 
He sees that there is no escape from it, whereas Passini takes a more lenient approach to war.