That's presuming the Pedersen Device did prove it's worth. I've heard conflicting reports about this thing, some saying it was accurate and deadly others that it was easy to lose bits of in the field.
It's not as if certain sections of the military profession weren't aware of the usefullness of semi-auto rifles pre-WW1, (Meunier Rifle), it's just that the war came along before anything practical could really be done to introduce them.
From what I've read, mostly field tests, the Pedersen Device could be quite useful. However changing the bolt took some time, yet the manual recommended doing this up to an hour before a battle was to begin. The various pieces of the kit could be lost, but the device itself was a single unit.
Well the later statement is what I'm looking for. True more died from artillery then bullets in WWI but how people view the conflict causes certain things to be seen as more important. So if the Germans all come home with tales of the British and their rapid fire rifles, would we see the K98 phased out? Or would volume of fire be seen as wasteful as many did?
Well the clip for one was just an awful looking thing. I cannot imagine how heavy a forty round clip added to the rifle would be, but it was more of a firing from the hip kinda thing as I understand.
It also stuck out diagonally from the host weapon and it's the only magazine I can think of to use that configuration, and I'm guessing there's a reason for that.
It better works very well or the forces opposing modern firearms will have a field day! These guys were powerful enough without a big failure of a semi-auto rifle.
@Redbeard: My encyclopedia of WW2 weapons is very critical of the Madsen: It says it cooks off much sooner than similar designs, had an unstable bipod and became very inaccuret once the barrel was hot.