davem, I'm quite familiar with (and fond of) all that you quote. Nor do I doubt one word of it from the professor's standpoint (or indeed from any standpoint!)
However I find it *very* significant that he did *not* point these things out in his prologue. I think Mister Underhill is very much on target when he talks about Tolkien's modesty and lurking ambition.
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Maybe "false modesty" isn't quite right. I think he has an agenda of sorts when he protests that LotR is only a story. I'm reminded of Letter 131: "[The Arthurian mythos] is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal." I wish he would have elaborated, but I think we can get the gist of those reasons. To call attention to any meaning of his story is to transform it instantly into a sermon or a lecture, and so he says in effect, hey -- it's just a story; take from it what you will.
But lurking under that is some ambition. Letter 153: "I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to 'bring them home'."
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In other words (my paraphrase)...:
If I tell you what it represents to me in my own heart as I write it and reread it afterwards, then you won't have the joy of discovering that for yourself. Maybe by my not telling you, you'll miss it completely; who knows? But maybe you'll find it, and maybe you'll find deeper things that I didn't even know were there. Either way, if I let the story speak for itself, you'll find what you are meant to find. So just read the story. By the way, don't look for Atom bombs, or communism or fascism or politics, and don't look for the Incarnate Messiah; and don't psychoanalyze me. That's not what I put in there. But read the story. You might find something.
I firmly believe he is (desperately) hoping that we do, because On Faery Stories states the purpose of myth & Faery tale, and implies that he wants us to reach that. But if we start out looking for it, we just might miss the story.