The whole Forward is too long to fit in the margins of this forum. Here seems to me to be the likely section:

The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally
appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with
reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have
read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive
was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story
that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and
at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my
own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was
inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate
have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I
have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works,
or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the
points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that
fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please
everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points;
for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or
chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially
approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many
defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation
either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these
in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too
short.

As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the
author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it
put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but
its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of
the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter,
"The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was
written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of
inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed
along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its
sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already
written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began
in 1939 or its sequels.

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its
conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the
legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against
Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr
would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get
possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the
time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into
Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own
with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that
conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they
would not long have survived even as slaves.

Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of
those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike
allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew
old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true
or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience
of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory';
but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the
purposed domination of the author.

An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience,
but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are
extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best
guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also
false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and
critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the
events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful
influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to
feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often
forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an
experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918
all but one of my close friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous
matter: it has been supposed by some that 'The Scouring of the Shire'
reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my
tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from
the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as
developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance
or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis
in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely
different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in
childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when
motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still
building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the
last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that
long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young
miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was
not named Sandyman.