Recently I lectured at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada's amalgamated all-service academy. I was invited as the author of Annapolis Autumn, my book about my home institution of the U.S. Naval Academy that suggests that not all the things we do actually produce better officers. Some are merely vestiges of tradition, followed slavishly without asking whether they're a good idea or a bad. Some are bad. I think we should lose these.

At first glance, it seemed the Canadians had decided something of the sort too. RMC seemed far less tightly wound than Annapolis. To begin with, there's no wall around the place and no gate guards (until recently at USNA, these were impressive-looking U.S. Marines). The drinking age in Canada is three years less than Maryland's unforgiving 21. I spotted some civilian professors in open-necked shirts with no jackets (I live in a suit and tie at Annapolis), cadets were wearing covers inside of buildings (horrors), and a greater proportion of the student body is female than at Annapolis. In short, the atmosphere of the place seemed to corroborate the image of Canada as a kinder, gentler version of the U.S., their military school a calmer version of ours, as indeed their military is vestigial compared to that of the US. After all, without a rival school to whip students into a frenzy and not even a football team, how could their energy level fail to be lower? What do they yell instead of, “Beat Army, Sir!”

Yet other indications suggested to me that things at RMC were exactly the same as elsewhere. First off, there was my co-lecturer, a young man now in the Canadian Foreign Service who had written a book called Bonk on the Head, published in Canada. I recommend it. It's a fairly standard coming-of-age story (the narrator has issues with -- surprise -- Dad). But its most heartfelt passages are of vicious hazing and almost torture at RMC, set about a decade ago, things we hear about in the not-so-old days of the U.S. service academies.

The author, John-James Ford, said that not all these things had happened to him personally, or even to a single person. He'd patched together things he'd heard and things he'd experienced. But it was true enough, he said, that many ex-cadets had written to thank him for being honest. The abuse heaped on him was in any case enough that by his final year he was periodically blacking out and was declared mentally unfit to serve. He graduated but was not commissioned. (Most of the abuse is about forcing plebes to repeatedly mime homosexual intercourse, and starving them to the point of collapse. In addition, head calls are purposely denied.)

This kind of thing seems a bit old-fashioned to us; we've got a kinder gentler world at the military academies nowadays. This may be because there's more public scrutiny, or because there are more women: this changes things, as the world outside demands that the military follow the same rules as the non-military world. Elsewhere in the world, they apparently still do things the old way -- perhaps because there's less oversight. The day of my lecture, the Globe and Mail, “Canada's National Newspaper,” contained stories of vicious physical abuse in the Russian military: beating and immobilization that resulted in amputations of limbs.

What's I realized in Canada is that all militaries, from Moscow to Montreal, share the view that you have to turn up the pain-o-meter in order to break in newbies. Our only differences are about how high to turn it up. The “old school” sees nothing wrong with hazing. It's unfortunate, they might say, when it gets out of hand. But it's in the right spirit. “Battle isn't a walk in the park, you know,” they growl. You think al-Qaida will hold a suicide bomber until our boys have had their breakfast?

But let's think outside the box. Who says any of this increases battle-readiness? Based on what data? The old school regrets the degree to which we've become “soft,” clearly believing that more is more. But who's ever shown that 2x amount of “challenge” (or hazing) produce 2x worth of battle readiness? What if more pain produces less willing soldiers, not more so?

In fact, I think people simply hold onto this one as a matter of faith. Many people used to hold on to “spare the rod and spoil the child” as a matter of faith. It turns out all it does is produce wife-beaters and abusive parents in the next generation. Who knew? Or is the idea that they're so enraged by the time they get to battle that they spring willingly into the breach? It might work this way with dogs, but I don't know of any research that suggests it works this way with human beings.

Let's take as an example one of the non life-threatening pains most military systems, including USNA and RMC, still inflict: sleep-deprivation. Midshipmen have to go to class and study groggy. As soon as they sit down they fall asleep. To me this looks like a bad system, one that saps the very juice from the academic system of which I'm a part. How can they think? Concentrate? Yet at RMC, a Canadian LTC rose immediately to defend sleep deprivation as a training tool. He insisted that it makes them better able to deal with the reality of life in strenuous conditions of battle.

What's this conviction based on? Do we in fact know that people can be trained through sleep-deprivation to be better at operating without sleep? If being miserable is a learned skill, shouldn't we be torturing them a few minutes every day to acclimate them to what they may one day undergo as POWs? We give up an incalculable amount in the classroom at USNA to feed this system (students trying to sleep, worried about rates, focused on other things). I want somebody to show me that what we get in return in the future makes hits like this right here, right now worth it.

How about treating people like adults and showing them some respect? Are we saying that they won't be willing to fight? That's a scary thought.