They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
Hemingway rejects the traditional idea that dying for one’s country is inherently noble or glorious. He contrasts an older ideal of patriotic sacrifice with his experience of modern warfare, in which mechanised weapons and large-scale killing can make individual deaths seem arbitrary and impersonal. The blunt image of dying “like a dog” strips away ceremonial language and presents battlefield death as physical, undignified and potentially without meaningful purpose.
In Notes on the Next War, the passage forms part of Hemingway’s wider warning against political leaders who encourage war through appeals to patriotism. His argument is not that courage or loyalty have no value, but that such values can be used to persuade people to accept risks whose purposes deserve scrutiny. The quotation therefore challenges romantic accounts of military sacrifice and emphasises the distance between patriotic rhetoric and the actual experience of those who are expected to fight and die.