THE DIGNITY OF MAN (338 pp.)Russell DavenportHarper ($4).
At the close of World War II, when the victorious armies of West and East met and momentarily fraternized, a U.S. correspondent asked a Russian officer over lunch what he thought the war was all about. Replied the Russian: "Svoboda [Freedom]!" The correspondent never forgot that answer. Journalist Russell Davenport, who in 1940 had quit his job as FORTUNE'S managing editor to direct Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign, was also a poet (My Country) and philosopher. To his brooding, deep-thrusting mind, the exchange with the Red army man summarized "the predicament...