23 JANUARY 1864, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE haze is clearing off from the Schleswig-Holstein affair. The Austrian and Prussian Governments, alarmed at the growth of a "third Power " in Germany formed out of the petty States, proposed to the Diet to allow them to invade Schleswig, not as instruments of the Diet, but as Great Powers. The Diet refused, and Vienna and Berlin instantly intimated that they could not permit the Diet to become aggressive, that they took the matter into their own hands, and that they would themselves invade Schleswig. The ground of their invasion would not, how- ever, be the indivisibility of the Duchies, or the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, but the breach of the promise made on 20th January, 1852, when Herr Bluhme, Danish Minister, accepted the "views of the Courts of Berlin and Vienna, more especially in re- spect to the non-incorporation of Schleswig with the Kingdom." The war, therefore, if there is war, is strictly international, and its results will be subject to the action of diplomacy.